Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.
I bought a new watch and when setting it up, I messed up. I got on the treadmill to do a walk and it asked me to calibrate by sharing the distance I walked. I took the distance in miles and converted it to kilometres. Except after recording 3 walks that have been recorded as runs it has become obvious to me that the calibration should have been in miles, and I never should have made the conversation.
What it comes down to is human error. 100% my fault, and the watch settings probably even asked for the distance in miles. But now I’ve got to figure out how to recalibrate my pace.
Something else I’m looking to recalibrate is my sleep patterns, my watch tells me that I don’t get a lot of deep sleep in a night. That’s part of the recalibrating, but hopefully the other part is the watch learning more about me. It suggests that I get 9 hours sleep to be fully recovered. I don’t remember the last decade where 9 hours sleep was something I could achieve… not just because I can’t schedule it, but because I simply can’t sleep that long. Any time I go past 8 hours I’m up whether I want to be or not.
All that said, the watch isn’t even a week old, so maybe I’ll just do a hard reset and start over. This time I’ll pay a little more attention when I’m calibrating it.
I’m going to be joining a gym. I feel that I need to.
Sure I have a pretty good home gym. Sure I have been disciplined, working out on average 6 days a week. Sure it’s convenient not to leave the house early in the morning, and not add 25 minutes in my car getting to and from the gym. These are all wonderful perks of working out at home, and they’ve served me well for almost 7 years… but I need something else.
I need the camaraderie of working out with a friend.
I need a facility that will provide me with machines that I can work my legs without putting pressure on my back.
I need a place where I’m motivated to do more than my one-muscle-group workouts I’ve been doing at home.
I need to be around other people working hard to make themselves feel better.
But above all that, what I also need is to rebalance my morning routine to include longer workouts and travel time. I’ve loved my morning routine. I’ve developed great habits where my motivation to get going sits at zero and I still get everything done… it’s robotic, finish one task, immediately head to the next. Stacked habits that just happen once I wake up in the morning.
This morning I went to the gym for the first time and I’m writing this when I’m usually getting out of the shower to go to work. I’ll be arriving at work later than usual today, not late for work, just later than the norm. I also haven’t done my morning meditation, which will need to be moved to the evening. So already I see that things will need to change. And with that change, the autopilot gets turned off.
So, I need to create new systems, a different stacking of my habits, such that it gets re-automated. I’m sure I’ll have to pump up my motivation until that happens, but I’m so ready for this change.
Civilization is built on infinite growth within a finite system. Until our values move away from a focus on consumerism and wealth accumulation, we are never going to get to either environmental/planetary or human well-being. The energy demands are just too great and simultaneously too destructive.
Will AI solve or magnify these problems? I fear it will indeed magnify them. It’s not just the energy demands of these Artificial Intelligence machines that’s the issue, it’s the promise of more goods at a cheaper price. It’s the promise of every gadget you desire, affordably made by automated, robotic systems in dark factories by intelligent robots that don’t need the lights on. It’s the promise of a luxury electric car for $15,000-20,000; a $5,000 robot that does all your chores at home; a 3D printer that can manufacture high quality, factory grade products in the comfort of your own home. All that’s needed are the resources to build these things… unlimited resources being taken from a planet with limited resources.
That’s right, to make this amazing, almost limitless future possible, we just need infinite resources from a finite planet. Meanwhile, wealth accumulation is being concentrated, the middle class is shrinking, and we are madly extracting resources from the earth, with little concern over the environmental impact.
I bought myself a new watch. This is the first time that I’m going to be regularly wearing a watch in over 20 years. I chose the Garmin Venu 4, for a few reasons, mostly related to health tracking. I would have chosen the Apple Watch, but I want sleep data and my family members all have the Apple Watch and end up having to charge it every night. The Venu 4 has a 12 day battery life, and even if I use it on full brightness, I’m sure it will last well over a week, which is something I really wanted.
Right now I feel like I bought a race car and I’m only driving it in a school zone. This watch has so many capabilities that I’m not yet using. That’s because I got it late yesterday afternoon and I had a dinner function to go to, so I really haven’t had time to play with it and set up all the fancy bells and whistles it comes with.
So far what I like is that I can easily check my heart rate. This is an important feature for me because I think that I’m not getting myself into the heart rate zone that I want to be in when I’m on the treadmill. Now I’ll be able to monitor this. Also, the sleep data from last night suggests that most the night I was in a light sleep and I woke up quite a lot. This is something I really want to monitor. I already tend to get only 7 hours sleep a night, I’m hoping I can figure out a way to use that time more effectively, sleeping more deeply. Monitoring my sleep data will help me on that journey.
I’ll be learning more about how to fully take advantage of all the features this watch has over the next few workouts and evenings. My only disappointment so far is that it isn’t compatible with Apple Music, because Apple doesn’t share music with non-Apple products. But this isn’t a huge deal since I keep my phone with me anyway. Other than that, I’m pretty excited to see what this watch can do, and how I’m going to use it to track my health living journey.
I’m frustrated with myself because last night I woke up twice with half developed ideas for Daily-Ink posts, then I woke up this morning not remembering them. A very long time ago I used to keep a pen and paper next to my bed to jot down ideas but I haven’t done that in years. I think it’s time to start again. Sure, I could use my phone, but I don’t want to shine a light in my face or my wife’s, and I don’t want to wake up more than is necessary.
These ideas, like dreams, tend to be very elusive in the morning. I can clearly remember having them, but they drift away. Fleeting thoughts that seemed once solid, but now sit translucent and unrecognizable. I remember waking up. I remember thinking that the idea was good enough to share, and in one of the two instances last night I even remember giving the post a title. And now that’s all I remember, the moment, not the concept… the thinking, not the thought.
I wonder how often this happens in a night? We formulate ideas, resolve issues, and solve problems only to have these insights slip away from our sleepy brains. How many times have we let cognitive brilliance drift away as we drift back to sleep? Or maybe our minds let these ideas go because they are not as insightful as we remember them in the morning. Maybe they escape us because they are not nearly as developed as we think we remember them to be in the morning?
I hope to learn soon just how valuable these ideas might be. I’ll set a pen and small notepad by my bedside and try to remember to jot these ideas down, while hopefully being able to get quickly back to sleep.
My work switch used to be turned on all the time. I’d respond to an email after 11pm, or even during dinner. I’d get to work around 7:15am and frequently stay at work until I was late for dinner. Furthermore, not only did I wear this work ethic like a professional uniform, I also used the word ‘busy’ like it was a badge of honour.
What I lacked was balance.
I think I still struggle with balance but it is getting better. The place this really shows is when I turn the ‘work’ switch off. It started with my vampire rule for email, whereby like a vampire not being allowed to enter your house without an invitation, I do not permit myself to send anyone an email after 6pm unless I’m invited in… unless I am sent an email requesting a response. Otherwise, my email can wait until the morning, rather than interrupt anyone in the evening.
When my switch is on, I’ll give my all, but when my switch is off, this is where I’ve gotten better. Now I am better at not being a slave to email. I am also better at not perseverating over things I need to do at work while I’m at home.
The one challenge in getting here has been letting go of the guilt. I know it’s healthy to toggle the switch off, but for a long time I felt guilty doing it, and if I’m honest, I still struggle sometimes. It would be nice if it was as simple as literally flipping a switch, but it isn’t. Sometimes the work light still flickers when it is supposed to be off.
The thing about grief that is most challenging is how different it is for everyone. For some it hits them like crashing waves on a rocky, unswimable shoreline, for others it feels like rogue waves hitting unexpectedly. For others it hits like ripples from a rock thrown into water, with a pattern of lulls and peaks. For still others it is like echoes of the past reminding us that the person was just here, while simultaneously reminding us of the emptiness to come without the loved one in our lives anymore.
For many, these feelings are intertwined with different emotions: Feelings of love, heart ache, loss, emptiness, guilt, shock, disbelief, and even anger. These emotions don’t always match with others who are grieving. For some people sharing their personal connection feels necessary, for others it’s private. From tears to laughter and everything in between mismatched emotions splash us like unexpectedly cold water, feeling that much colder when the people around us don’t necessarily respond the same way.
Like I said a few days ago, “I don’t have the words,” is sometimes the only words you are able to share… and yet they feel brutally insufficient. And so it is that the waves, ripples, and echoes hit us unevenly as we grieve. Each of us finding ways to make sense of loss, and finding ways forward… Finding ways to strengthen the echoes of fond memories while weakening the ripples of grief and loss.
I spent the afternoon with my mom, her sister, my wife and my kids. My aunt had us in stitches. It was wonderful having a good belly laugh. My favourite line from my auntie. “I like living by myself. I’m fine to talk to myself, I don’t need anybody else. It’s only a problem if I hear voices talking back, other than that, I’m good.”
Before this, I spent most of the day with an old friend. I can’t travel back home to my mom and not find time to see my buddy.
It’s just wonderful to realize that what I value most are my family and friends. Give me this, and my health, and I really don’t need much else from this world.
The events couldn’t be further apart with respect to the kinds of emotions felt, but as you get older it’s likely that the only times you meet for large gatherings are weddings and funerals. Celebrations of new beginnings and ultimate endings.
The one thing they have in common is bringing people together. Family and friends making the effort to travel long distances to share a common space with each other.
A chance to see once little people all grown up, and to see the age lines in those who are like you, starting to show the wear of time. A chance to catch up on the news of lives seen in bits and spurts. A chance to hug, to chat, to laugh, to cry.
A chance to be together, sporadically celebrating beginnings and endings.
A couple years ago I had a herniated disk. The herniation pinched a nerve going into my left arm and that’s where I felt the pain… a pain that seemed ever present. I was on very strong meds. I supplemented these with legal but more recreational drugs. The prescription ones made the pain tolerable. The recreational ones helped me move the pain from my brain to my arm, to relieve the anguish of being in constant pain.
The timing went like this: In early February the pain started. In early March I got the preliminary diagnosis, and was prescribed medication. I visited my parents for March break and the day I arrived my dad had a stroke. I spent the next 12 days in agony, helping my family deal with dad hospitalized, while making physio appointments and getting IMS treatment for the constant physical agony I was in.
When I got home from that trip I got prescribed much harder drugs. I was in constant pain. One day in late April I was driving to school and I realized that I shouldn’t be driving, my meds were too strong. This hit me hard, I instantly made the connection that if I shouldn’t be driving, I shouldn’t be in charge of a school. I was able to make a doctor’s appointment the very next day, and I got a letter to take some time off. That day I also got a phone call to say that I better get home to my parents. My dad, who never left the hospital since his stroke, had taken a turn for the worse and probably wouldn’t make it through the night.
I said a final goodbye to him over the phone before getting on a late night flight. I’ll never know if he heard those words. I spent another 10 or so days back with my mom, cleaning up things my dad left behind that needed to get cleaned up. At this point I was also supplementing my prescription.
I hit a low point after I returned home. One unusually painful night I had to ask my daughter to drive me to the dispensary… a dad asking his daughter to drive him to get his fix. That’s not really what it was, but it felt like that to me. Loser dad who can barely get himself from bed to the couch, and didn’t have the wherewithal to even get dinner ready for a wife working full time, having to get his daughter to drive him to buy drugs. Not a proud moment for me.
Within a couple more weeks, the inflammation reduced, the nerve wasn’t compressed as much, and I was able to get back to only a mild prescription… And then back to work after 5 or 6 weeks off. The whole experience was awful physically and emotionally, but it had an end! I knew it had an end, but sometimes at my worst I questioned it. I wondered, if this is life from now on, could I go on?
—-
My sister had an MS diagnosis for over 25 years. Slowly and incrementally she lost feeling in her legs. They were numb to the touch, but she felt pain, searing sciatica pain. Shooting pain that ran down her legs. For the most part things would stay static, then she’d have a small episode, and she’d lose a bit more feeling, be a bit less mobile, but the pain persisted. About 4-5 years ago the episodes escalated, and her mobility declined much more quickly. And still the pain.
Recently it became clear that she’d be moving from a walker to a wheelchair. A week ago she had six falls (only 6 that I’m aware of in that week). She would cut her finger cutting vegetables, and not feel it, only becoming aware of the injury from seeing the blood. And despite this numbness and lack of feeling, there was still the never-ending sciatica pain.
On Monday her daily pain was ended. 56 years old. Half of that time in incrementally greater pain. I can honestly say that she was stronger than me.
I’ll miss her dearly, and yet I’m thankful she isn’t going to suffer any more.
Sharon Silvera Truss May 15, 1969 – November 24, 2025
