Things Worth Packing

A Life Worth Living

I’ve been revisiting my past work in an attempt to love writing again. Between the book reviews, life updates, and notes from protests, it’s abundantly clear just how much of my drive to create came from an over-boiling anger at the world. In the years leading up to 2020, my life was on rails. As long as I started the engine, life took me in the right direction. I’d grown accustomed to everything working out in my favour with little intentionality on my part. My undergrad was completed with minimal stress—at least relative to my engineer friends. I even had graduate school mostly figured out. In retrospect however, that does seem like resoundingly little to go on. I know my life was much less varied at 20 but surely I had a little more going on than being a student. Anyhow, the pandemic was the cow on the tracks that led to catastrophic derailment. I vividly remember how exasperated, how frustrated, how resentful, how angry I was when I finally got my diploma in the mail. It’s a ridiculous image to conjure up now; I was shirtless in these white trousers wearing this infuriatingly-radiant blue grad cap. I was staring at myself in the mirror. Red. That was the first and last time seeing my diploma and to this day, not one person, bar my mother, has asked to see it either. I spent 2021 coming to terms with just how little of the world I did have control over--my peace was letting go of plans and expectations. 2022 I honestly don’t remember much of. I have very few photos, next to no writing, 3 ominous journal entries and no recollection of major events that year.

Maybe I took some time away from existing.

Since then I’ve managed to negotiate a truce between my brain and a life far from any trajectory I could have anticipate year-to-year.  I can make sense of anything:

[Draw flow chart leading back to "then don't worry about it"]

Is there an issue? Y/N

Do I have any control over the problem? Y/N

Am I going to do anything about it? Y/N

Will worrying about it help? Y/N

Very little gets a rise out of me beyond watching someone cut vegetables with poor technique and losing things in my rather small apartment. Luckily, I live alone so the former is a rare scene and I have no-one but myself to blame for the latter. Any distress I face can be waved away with the flow chart above, a shrug, and going to bed before midnight. If things get really bad then I’ll write a poem.

Having wiped my hands of my feelings, I’m finding it extraordinarily difficult to be creative in the way that I want to be. Rather than feel my emotions to then translate them into creative expression, I explain and intellectualize them. Little escapes my brain unfiltered by the carefully construed calm I’ve cloaked myself in. It’s like standing on the wall of rock and debris that marks the perimeter of an atoll; looking out, you see the unconstrained power of the ocean. Small skiffs bob up and down wearily in their attempts to make it to the horizon. Captains know that little more than a change of wind can contort each rolling mound of water into a snowcapped peak ready to capsize a cruise ship. Looking inward, you realize why it’s called “The Great Barrier Reef.” You trade the signature ocean blue for a faint turquoise tint set against the white coral sand that covers a volcano partially reclaimed into sea floor. At odds with the capricious ocean that surrounds it, the worst you’ll have to navigate inside the atoll is a manageable chop. I’ve spent the past couple years standing on that reef wall. The ocean’s passionate turmoil call one name. The tranquil consistency of the atoll calls me by another. My skiff is marooned in between.

Am I going to do anything about it?

But maybe it’s not the anger that I miss. Maybe it’s heart. It’s become too easy for me to not read. Not the news, not the backlog of novels on my bookshelves, not tutorials, not even the instructions on the ant traps I just put in the kitchen. I skim and forget. Reading has stopped being for the benefit of my thinking, now it’s an excuse not to think. It’s become too easy not to take photos. Not just photoshoots, but generally. I spent 6 weeks on vacation and have 13 images spanning three cities. It’s been too easy to eat the same thing over and over again—despite hating left overs—too easy to black out for the 11 hours I spend at work, too easy to wear the same three outfits, too easy to put up with shit that is probably worth fixing. It’s become entirely too easy to continue my existence without living.

I say that as life is good right now. I spent last Saturday having dinner at Bar Corso. It’s our friend’s restaurant and we’re there often. Often enough that I probably should know more from the menu than the Wagyu Crostini. In my defence, every time we come in Luke, the chef, asks a very difficult question to say no to: “Do you want me to just keep sending food out?” Lucky and Tay asked what the occasion was this time. There wasn’t one. I knew that when I’d made the reservation but I paused to make certain because we’d spent the last 6 months celebrating milestones, accomplishments, and life almost weekly. I’m winning and so are the people around me. Sure, I work a lot but I have a reason to. I can (mostly) afford the life I want to live. I’m even seriously considering buying the car I spent my childhood chasing and the right example could be an asset not a liability. Life is good right now. I’ve been enjoying it.

Time is not money, Time is Time

I’m writing this paragraph at work; I’m leaning on a rail guarding a ledge overlooking the hole I spend most of my days in. A thick fog has overrun the site. It’s cold. The two cranes are visible only when the lights flash intermittently to warn helicopters. In 2024, I spent 1643 hours regular time, 401.5 hours at time and a half, and 100 hours double time here. 2100+ hours at work. I took two months off. That's 48.7 hours a week which is much less than it feels like. I have a lot of downtime on job. I’m trying to force myself out of the dissociative state I’ve adopted to do this week in, week out. It makes it difficult to write—by “it” i mean both being here so much and associated fugue. That said, I’ll be here for another year because I can recognize a good opportunity when I see one.

I brought my camera today. I figured the fog would obfuscate even more than it did a day or two ago. Every now and then the site reveals this strange allure. It ignites the debate I have with myself about whether or not I like what I do—if it’s possible to love something that pays my bills. I’ve been on an odd, pointless night shift since getting back from Berlin. I didn’t mind it at first. With most of the crew gone for the night, It left a window to get things done without the plan changing three times in as many hours. The later start time also helps with my winter-induced insomnia. I’ll still wake up a few times a night but at least I have enough time to fall back asleep. Having an hour or two in the morning to slowly start my day will be missed whenever this does end. As the months draw on, I’ve come to appreciate the relative quiet as well. Meandering through the last 18 months of progress makes for a strange feeling. It’s not every day, nor every week, nor every month, but when the fog rolls in and the cold saturates layers that should be warm enough, when the hammers fall silent and the only sounds left hanging in the air are the buzzing of the flood lights and low, rhythmic rumble of the idling 6.7L Cummings turbo-diesel in the 100 tonne crane, when you’re fighting everything in your body telling you, “no-one will notice if you leave right now.” It’s then that every wall built, every trench back-filled, every track slab poured feels like something you had a part in. It’s then (and every two weeks on Friday) that the job feels satisfying because the work feels real.

Dad's Side of the Family

Knowing me is knowing I have a new life every other year: some odd new hobby, a dozen outlandish stories, and the same set of problems to solve. I spent a week at my uncle’s flat in London—sleeping, mostly. Between naps I found time to share a meal with my cousins, his daughters. We’d been introduced before at a family (re)union a decade ago but it’s more honest to say we met that summer night at Lisboeta. It was only fair to let the eldest of us order the menu and a couple bottles of white on her father’s credit card. Coming from a family so disjointed, both immediate and extended, I’ve always been skeptical of it. Not just my family specifically but the notion of some intrinsic bond. At odds with embrace not because I’ve been othered but because I’m always ready to be. Dinner was lovely. The food was fantastic. The wine certainly tasted like wine. I felt astonishingly at ease on my walk home. Gone was the feeling of being from the odd part of the family. I’m just part of an odd family.

My uncle and I had dinner another night. We met at Embankment Station and he raised three options. I don’t remember the other two but we hopped on e-bikes and rode 10 minutes to older building of maybe 10 floors. The front doors opened to an expansive foyer that we quickly bypassed on the way to a small elevator that took us to the top floor. My uncle was greeted warmly by the hosts and every member of staff we saw. He was quick to introduce his nephew visiting from Canada and almost as quick to navigate us to the bar. The rosé and rum took us to the patio overlooking the city. I’ll let you guess whose drink was whose. He told me a little about the space and his life in London. We began piecing together the last time we had seen each other; I was 17 and even less eager to speak than I am now. My side of the catch-up was politely interrupted by the gentleman handing us menus. My uncle asked the waiter about his wife or kids before asking about the specials and for a few more minutes to decide.

The wind picked up so we went inside. I took a moment to use the restroom to acclimatize myself with this strange new world I’d found myself in before washing my hands and finding Unc. We traded life stories over more liquor than food as I realized I was as much an enigma to him as he was to me. He told me about a conversation with a boss that changed his life and I wondered if he knew that his life had changed at that point. I suppose I could ask. He asks precise, incisive questions. It’s a skill I’ve always been envious of. I answered fully and shot back a few less precise, less incisive inquiries. My uncle’s undeniable success in business made sense to me during that back and forth. Just as I understood enough of his ambition to want to aspire to it, he said that he wasn’t nearly as focused and intentional at my age as I am now.

Months later, I’m reliving that conversation only a few paragraphs away from wondering if I’ve lost my heart.

On a Creative Spirit

Less well known than my proclivity for finding myself in strange circumstances with very interesting, or unsettling, people is that writing was my first love (then the ex I wrote a couple stories about who is now friends with technically-not-an-ex who I’ve written a couple poems about). Words are important to me. They are the scalpels we use to slice ourselves open as well as the thread we use to suture the wounds. Words are important to me: that’s why everything I write is a word-by-agonizing-word slog. It’s why editing takes longer than the drafts. It’s why I find politicians so fascinating; how does one make a career of saying nothing in as many words as possible? How do they feel no shame when their word means nothing?

Over the past year and a bit, I’ve been making my way through everything James Baldwin has written or said. I’m not one for heroes but he, in so many ways, encapsulates the dynamism, industry, and sensitivity I aspire to. I’m waiting on twin copies of Jimmy’s Blues that I ordered through my favourite local book store. This must be my fifth and sixth times buying this book. I love it so much that I give it away to whoever shows the slightest interest in it.  My most recent one was annotated for someone I hadn’t even met but I forgot it on the plane on the way to Calgary. We go again.

“It is dreadful to be

so violently dispersed.

To dare hope for nothing,

and yet dare to hope.

To know that hoping

and not hoping

are both criminal endeavours,

and, yet, to play one's cards.”

My favourite poem changes every time I read the book but today, this one sticks with me. You know why—in the immediate—if you've read “Thoughts on Descent.” On more cosmic scale, it makes me wonder why I’m often seen as a pessimist despite my protests that the inverse is true. I know I’m the first to speak ill of the world but heed my protest. And by protest, I don’t mean my half-hearted attempts to argue back the accusation. By protest I mean the people I surround myself with and the values that permeate my interactions with them. I’ll let you know which page this one is on when the bookstore calls me. (I gave my copy away again.)

Every Easter in Belize, there’s a big fishing tournament at Glover’s Reef to commemorate not the death and subsequent rising of Jesus Christ. I couldn’t tell you the last tournament I attended but I can tell you all the fondness I have towards easter comes from those weekends on Alex’s boat listening to Weird Al and Johnny Cash songs whose lyrics, besides Amish Paradise, I never committed to memory. On a particularly bright, particularly hot, particularly slow, stagnant mid-afternoon, we just couldn’t catch a fish. Our best attempt ended with a scissor tailed bird stealing the fish as it jumped out of the water. With four bottles of rum, three fishing rods, two hand lines and a cooler full of bait, catching something should have been a foregone conclusion. Yet we all sat, silently, awaiting a victory. Nine-year-old me was sat on the bench behind the captain’s chair overlooking the twin 200HP Suzuki engines. We were trolling just fast enough to catch a breeze but not enough to escape the faint smell of exhaust that hung in the air. I held the nylon hand-line loosely. No more pressure than required to stop the reel from running. Enough to feel the odd nibble on the squid shaped snapper fillet wrapped around my hook. At some point, a tall man whose face I don’t remember crawled across my bench to reach the stern of the 30 foot fibreglass-hulled boat. With one arm wrapped around an engine and knees braced against the transom, the faceless man started pissing into the turbulent wake. I remember thinking how oddly yellow it was and how this stream reminded me of the scissor-tailed frigate bird that stole our fish not long before.

It wasn’t long before I found myself in the same position as the faceless man: knees braced against the transom, one little arm wrapped around the hot black cowling of the outboard, the other hand holding tightly on to the hand line pulling me into the ocean. I’m not sure how long I was there before someone noticed that I was not peeing but it must of been Alex asking, “Yuh good back deh?” and realizing the terrified look on my face was the closest thing to “Fuck no!” as I could muster. They tied my line to the bench from that point forward. Thinking back to my childhood is always interesting because I don’t remember experiencing that day at all apart from the very yellow urine—seriously, it was probably phosphorescent—but I can vividly recollect being told the story years later.

Loving the Process

Point being, I’m not an extrovert by nature. I’ve always had a strained relationship with speaking. I avoid doing it as much as possible in most circumstances and when I do speak, it’s at a volume likely inappropriately low for a library, let alone where I am. Yeah, I’m out all the time, constantly meeting new people, and running into old ones but that’s something I’ve cultivated in myself. I am very content at home: reading, writing, listening to strange album after strange album, sewing, cooking, or trying to find some new layout for my furniture that makes my apartment feel less like one room. I’m content at home watching airline incident—and accident—investigations and video essays detailing all the times the CIA has decided we can’t have anything nice. There is much to do at home. I could make my bed or figure out if I’m able to call myself a philosopher if I start writing in second-person. Yeah, I’m out all the time but standing outside the club tellin’ someone about the play I saw or on a walk euro-stepping pedestrian traffic. I’m comfortable at home not watching whatever anime one of you recommended to me that I said I’d check out—I won’t. I could be at home thinking about Air America smuggling drugs around the world to fund covert wars on people with good music and food.

I can’t tell if I care l to finish the photo-book I’ve claimed l to be “working on” for four years now. It’s been easy not to. The writing is collecting digital cobwebs somewhere on some drive I’ve forgotten. The same can be said for the very detailed outline for the remaining chapters to be shot. There was a time I felt so strongly optimistic about finishing this project that you would not have been able to convince me that I’d be here now, looking at the display cabinet full of cameras and old film as a monument to a past life, wondering if selling everything is closing the book or restarting it from the foreword. I feel about art almost as strongly as I feel about flying. That is, I hate booking flights, hate heading to the airport, I hate hallucinating passport sized holes in every pocket and bag. I hate the dead time: in line to check the bag, in line at security for my random search, waiting at the gate, in line to board, waiting on the plane to take off, waiting on the plane in the air, waiting after landing et cetera and ad nauseam but I love being places. If I’ve lost you, I mean to say I take little joy in the creative journey yet find tremendous satisfaction in the result. I don’t like travelling. I like being places.

It’s been three days since the last half-paragraph. This not-quite night shift is starting to get to my sense of time. I hear time is relative. Relative to what? I’m tempted to ramble on about my uncertainty but this piece is On a Creative Spirit and I’ve gotten side tracked. Ideas come and go with a regularity that desire does not. There’s a conversation floating around my head: I’m not sure if it was one I had with myself or someone else but the participants don’t affect the salience. I remember asking my reflection, why he stopped painting. It was something he had talent in, had enjoyed doing, and clearly had loved at some point.

I just stopped one day and never missed it.

There was no why. No reasoning. Not even a conscious decision. “I just stopped one day and never missed it.” I resisted the urge to protest on someone’s behalf so no but-you-were-so-good-at-it left my mouth. I say “someone’s” because it wasn’t mine, nor was it the ex-painter’s but that protest does seem to be an instinct most of us acquiesce to. That, I think, is where I am with photography. I can’t imagine a world in which framing up a composition doesn’t interest me but the results have ceased to be worth the experience, so-to-speak. Today, three things are true: I want to finish my poetry book, I’ve sold my camera, I’m hoping I miss it.

More than anything, I’m hoping one day I’ll understand not everything I’m good at requires my attention.

Closing Doors

I was at a talk on Sunday. Someone from London was visiting to deliver it. I say, “someone,” because he was a multi-hyphenate to such a degree that the eight or nine titles? hobbies? passions? interests? stakes he had laid claim to wouldn’t be apt enough descriptors. I’ll be honest, I zoned out for most of the talk. I dressed only to make it from my warm car to a reasonably warm room but this was a refrigerator with a projector in it so I shivered and wondered: wondered how I found myself being cold for free and I wondered what the value in staking claims to ones’ creative passions is.

“Oh, you’re a DJ!” someone will exclaim, somewhat imperatively.

My response? “I spin from time to time.”

While I could certainly be described as a writer or photographer or poet—I suppose—to me, I simply write and take photos, they are things I do rather than an identity assumed. While this could very well be semantic, I can’t say that I know where this discomfort with credentials comes from—not that I’d ever questioned it with intention enough to know. Now, mid-discussion with myself, I can say it’s always been there. Could it be as simple as an implicit understanding that adding hyphens beyond my last name means claiming the stakes of being judged for my work, which is, necessarily, an extension of myself? Probably not.

Mr. Multi-Hyphenate spoke a while longer. I thought maybe I’d forgotten the dream. Then I thought this wasn’t the dream. Then I realized it was a dream in a more literal sense. A fleeting thought floating listlessly amongst a lagoon of other unfinished notes and proto-sentences. A dream as in remnants of synapses firing in a mass of wrinkled meat. A memory that only felt real in the comatose state between slumber and awake. A dream as in it only exists because I thought it strange enough to mention here, brought into the world only by speech, not action. Well, there was that one time I did a photoshoot with a rather insecure body positive sex worker who didn’t tell me her face couldn’t be in the frame until 2 hours into the 4 hour shoot—at the, since renamed, trump tower. What an unpleasant way to spend an afternoon. She paid well, she tipped well, but I knew then, this was not a career for me.

Writing and photography have always been things that I do. “Always,” in this instance, means the last five years of my life, or every life I’ve lived in the past five. I don’t want the things I love to be trespassed on and mutilated by bills. The only way I would be creative for a living was if I made comfortably enough to turn down any job that did not interest me. At 22 I caught on: see, that’s ambitious—yet achievable. But after how many years of eating shit? I’m not certain.

Returning to the question of whether or not to admit to being Mr. Multi-Hyphenate myself, I had a conversation with a gentleman at a DJ workshop I’d found myself teaching at. He shared some excitement about the moments from the jobby job I’ve shared on socials here and there (crane stuff). I thanked him and invited him to an event I’d be spinning at later in the evening.

“Oh you’re a DJ too now?”

“Well, I DJ from time to time.”

After my set, he gestured at the controller between us saying something to the effect of loving music and being familiar with the equipment being enough to qualify one for the title. Mr. Multi-Hyphenate said the same thing.

This does point to the heart of my reticence.  I’m, unfortunately, too invested in being adept to just enjoy picking up skills. Throughout my hour or so long set, the gentleman from the coffeeshop ignored my reluctance-to-accept-credit-wrapped-in-what-presents-as-humility repeatedly. It culminated in this statement:

I see two options for you: either you go far with DJing, or you choose not to.

See, I’ve heard that before, with just about everything I’ve taken seriously. People like my photography, my poetry, my prose, my lackadaisical 2-step and elbow wagging in the club. In the eyes of the world, success—whatever that means—has always been a foregone conclusion for me. “Always,” in this instance, means as long as I can remember. It’s an odd expectation in my head. On one hand I know I’ll achieve meaningful successes—whatever that means—throughout my life. On the other hand I can’t shake the feeling that I’ll always be a thousand what-could-have-beens to a thousand people that met me on any one of a thousand days I sounded passionate about something else. That’s why the second part of the coffeeshop gentleman’s statement stuck with me.

I know I’m destined to build something more fulfilling than this train and too grounded to be lifted by any crane.

Unless You Choose Not To

I already have a hyphen in my name.

Focal Points

Anger, for a long time, has been a crutch I’ve leaned on to motivate myself.

I was near mute for a substantial part of my childhood. I cared about little beyond doing exceptionally well in school and my mother’s approval. Luckily for me, that Venn diagram was a circle. I can’t say whether or not I was prone to outbursts but there are a few that come to mind. The first was pointed at my Standard 2 teacher, a moron, who spoiled the end of my Thursday by claiming that dolphins were fish. I corrected her but she reiterated that dolphins were indeed fish (moron). I argued the facts and was admonished for my protest. I took my indignity home to my mother who was firmly on the side of the truth and surprisingly supportive of my lack of deference to authority. She took me to the internet cafe a block over and paid to print a few pieces of evidence I could bring with me to school. I left the house the following morning with a grin on my face that held through the morning assembly, English, Religious Studies, Mathematics, PE. After kicking a plastic bottle crushed into the loosest definition of a ball around for an hour, I walked triumphantly up newest classroom building on campus. I could taste the same ocean air dolphins breath through my grin. I took each step with an extra bounce. Weighed down by nothing but the three carefully folded sheets of printer paper proving me right. At last, Science class. My teacher, the moron, also had a grin on her face. She had decided to have a pop quiz on the teachings of the day prior and I’ll let you guess what the final question was. She clearly knew how to get under my skin because Question 15.) True or False, put me in quite the conundrum. My test scores were perfect up until that moment and I hated seeing anything but a tick in red ink on anything I handed in but I stuck to my conviction because while my teacher may be a moron, dolphins are not fish. I even had evidence. I went home in a fury. My mom sated me with the assurance that my teacher was not a moron and would mark my answer correctly—she was and she did not. Incensed, I brought my mother with me to school and directly into the principal’s office. My teacher had her arm twisted into apologizing and correcting my test score. I had one less fan that day.

The other time ended with me throwing the contents of my backpack at the wall a number of times because I got 93% on a test I should have gotten a perfect score on. Point being, I’ve always been very well regulated.

This whole “healing” thing has made creating quite the chore. I can’t remember the last time I was angered to the point of action. Angered in general feels far away. In terms of negative emotions I hover between frustrated, annoyed, disappointed and a mild disgust. None of the above are hidden well by the one part of my life I have yet to gain control over, my face. Disappointment, annoyance, disgust—I suppose anger lies at the most extreme ends of all of the above. In fact, most of what’s written on this website owes its existence to the exasperation and disillusionment with reality I once carried as a blanket. Some time ago, I wrote about the tremendous weight I feel to make the most of my opportunity to be in Canada. At the core of my passions, talents and expectations is a deeply held obligation to achieve. I was born and spent the first half of my childhood in Dangriga, Belize. A small, though domestically significant, town of 10,000 people in a country of 400,000 or so. My Belizean mother, a teacher at one point, instilled the importance of excelling scholastically as the grades of my older brother and I were a key component in her plans to leave the country and break generational curses as it’s described now.

I don’t know if people are happier in Belize than in Canada. I don’t know if people are happy in Canada at all. I live there but my life is far from the average Canadian’s. I mean that my lifestyle, friends, music, culture are far from the norm and as a result I don’t interact often with Canadians who exist in that norm. I work more, earn more, travel more, write more, eat better, and watch more deep dives on the CIA’s goings on than the average Canadian. And I’m Black, and an immigrant who never faced any of the administrative trouble immigrating comes with. These are all blindspots I’ve been cognizant of for a long time. Speaking electoral politics, the only people I know that can even consider voting for Pierre Pollieve, or however you spell it, are the middle Canada goobers at work who forget their bad spending habits and stints in rehab are supported by unions the conservatives would rather not exist. Similarly, coworkers are the only people I know who think the parliament full of multi-millionaire professional landlords have our best interests at heart. What I know—anecdotally, at least—about Belize is that people leave when given the opportunity and visit when they can until they can build or buy a house back home to retire in.

I know there are elements of Belize I wish existed in Canada (boats). I know I miss it when I’m away. I know I keep my vacations there to two weeks. I know there’s always a tinge of discomfort when people ask, in their baffled tones, why I don’t live there. I know my contentment in Vancouver is predicated on being able to afford to leave.

It’s taken me forever to figure out what this piece was about. Anger, I know is where I started, but that’s proven to be an unhelpful prompt. Only now am I realizing why.

I’d just gotten in from Belize. Left the airport at 7:30PM, got home at 8:00, and made it to Rammie’s Playground set just a few minutes late at 8:30. My set in Basement started around 9:15. My USBs were being read by the CDJs but my playlists were empty. Armed with jet lag, with misaligned grids, and a crowd utterly exhausted by 4 hours of what I assume was fantastic, high energy, music. I tested the waters: just a few nibbles on the Reggae and Reggaeton as I creeped the energy levels back up. After a tepid start, and a few mistakes as I remembered why I don’t particularly like spinning on CDJs—I later found out one was water damaged—I worked out what I would be told throughout the night was a solid set. I ended up closing as well but I only made it that far into the night because I saw my younger siblings, who were staying the night at mine, enjoying themselves and I couldn’t bring myself to cut that short.

Photo by Tobi Agonias, @tobiagoni, 13/06/2025

The next morning started earlier than I would have preferred. Kwasi picked me up on his way from the airport to head to his house so I could pick Cassius up. After driving back to my house to pick the young ones up, we set course for Squamish. Two hours later, we had only made it to Park Royal (half-hour away under normal circumstances). After an awkward across-the-parking-lot rendezvous dropping the young ones off with my step mother, I made it back to my apartment lobby around a little before 3PM. It was unusually warm inside but I figured the heat hadn’t been turned down considering it was one of the first “hot” days of the year. My glasses fogged up the second I opened the door to the sauna I once called home. A silent panic took hold of me when I realized not only was it hot inside, it was literally steaming the paint off the walls. I checked the bathroom: steam but no obvious source. I ran to the kitchen muttering “are you fucking kidding me?”

The hot water tap had blown completely off the hot water supply and had spraying an uncontrolled jet across the kitchen, now flooded in an inch of water hot enough to remove the finish off the floors.

My place was a write off. The couch was soaked, mattress soaked, every flat surface in the unit was covered in sweat. On the bright side, there were no more cobwebs. After closing the valves, I took videos and pictures of everything, sent a message to the building manager. Following a cursory assessment of how fucked I was—very—I made myself noodles for lunch. As we’ve all been primed to suspect, the landlords were useless: the building manager pretended not to see the water damage, the plumber pretended he didn’t just tape over the giant hole in the wall he made to replace the water line, and the building owners pretended there wouldn’t be mold everywhere. My next decision was whether or not to listen to music or a playlist of airplane crash investigations. I chose the former, put my headphones on, and started packing. Packing, throwing shit out, Shazam-ing tracks. Despite the long, exhausting, week ahead that, I think, at any other point in my life would have sent me spiralling, I felt fine. I bypassed all the stages of grief and found myself at acceptance shortly after lunch. Don’t get me wrong, I was very, very annoyed at how much shit I own—15 55L totes plus furniture. I was exhausted, and completely numb to whatever pain I should have felt after all that heavy lifting on next to no sleep, but also fine. No “why me?”, no “as soon as I thought things were going well,” no yelling, no screaming, no tumult. Sure, this was extremely inconvenient, expensive, and tedious to deal with but that’s all it was. Life is good right now. I’m surrounded by people willing to help, working on projects I care about. I’m making plans to be even more fulfilled in the future. I’m itching to be alone in my own space again and I’ve gotten one restful sleep in a month but I can’t think of a time in my life that I could be handling everything I am, at once, while being this tired and socially drained and still be in a good mood.

I keep circling back to this thing, On Anger. I’m not there anymore. I’m far enough away that I don’t understand why I Iet it dictate so much of my life. There’s lots to be angry about. At risk of sounding like the hotep kid in Boondocks: struggle is up, brother. O-pression is up, brother. The world is in a unsettling spot right now, it seems worse of now than when I was angry at it. The thing is, I don’t run the world but I’m confident I’m doing what I can to change my little piece of this little city that I live in. I even sort my recycling when I know the City of Vancouver just sends it to landfill anyway. I’m close enough to the fire that I’m not mistaking my lack of anger for a lack of care. I know I’m enjoying this strange winding road. The countless forks in the road are alluring since letting go of where I “need” to be. Each signpost a milestone to be celebrated not because of where I’m headed but because of where I’ve been: collecting hyphens and packing this bag of tricks til it overflows. As much as I love trains, I’m in the driver’s seat of my own vehicle now. I’m making all the turns, and choosing the convoy to share this part of journey with. I don’t know what my focal points are right now. Maybe it’s as simple and endlessly complex as finding This Life worth living.