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.
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?
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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
Too many people try to go solo when they have a community of support around them. There are more people around you willing to help you than you think. You just need to ask… and that’s the problem. The help isn’t always offered.
The people who can be most helpful would be glad to help if they just knew you needed help. The trick is to make contact and be clear about what you are hoping for.
There’s a difference between: “Do you have time to…?” And, “I really need you to help me right now.”
There’s a difference between: “Hey, just calling to say hi.” And, “I really needed a friend I could talk to right now.”
Too many times in my career, and in my personal life, I only realized after the fact that I could have gotten so much more support to get over a rough patch than I actually got, more than I asked for… only because I didn’t know how to ask, or that I could ask.
Sometimes I’ve thought I’d asked, but it was a soft ask, a sort of ‘help would be nice’ kind of ask rather than an, ‘I really need help’ kind of ask.
I get it, it would be great to have people realize that the soft ask wasn’t just an ask but a need. The thing is, everyone is knee deep in their own stuff and the soft ask can easily be missed. So don’t assume your soft ask is enough.
If you need help be clear, be blunt, and ask. It’s hard to do the hard ask… just do it anyway!
In keeping up with the last 12 hours, I have to once again say, ‘I don’t have the words’. There are circumstances that we come across where those are the only words you have to give. You want to say more, but you can’t. You want to show support, but you don’t know how. You want to make sense, but it seems senseless.
I’ve been working out between 5-7 times a week for almost 7 years. It has been at least 2 years since I skipped two days in a row. To count a workout I do cardio, a stretch, and pick one muscle group to work pretty hard. Over 95% of my workouts are at home in my small basement gym. It has been a great routine and I’ve enjoyed it.
But I am feeling stuck now. I feel the limits of my small gym. I seem to fall into the trap of focusing in on a few workouts I like and avoiding getting to many muscles that I’d normally work out in a bigger gym. It’s not that I haven’t seen gains, I have. The gains just haven’t been evenly distributed.
I think it’s time for me to sign up at a gym. I feel the need to do more than my home gym provides. I don’t yet know how this will upset my morning routine? Maybe I’ll have to write at night? Maybe I’ll do cardio at a different time? Even with just a 15 minute drive to the gym, that’s still a half hour daily of driving to add to my routine.
I’ll admit that I’m a bit apprehensive about changing my morning routine, but I know this is a step I need to take. It will only be a challenge until the end of this school year, when I retire. The question I then ask myself is, why don’t I just wait until then to join the gym? The answer is, I just know that now is the right time.
We often spend much of our life waiting for the right time, rather than just doing the thing we want to do. My only holdback right now is that most gyms have deals at Christmas/New Years and I’d rather not pay a lot more than necessary because I didn’t wait a few days. Holding off for less than a month seems reasonable. Holding off for 7 months doesn’t. Even if I only use the gym 2-4 times a week to start, I think it will fill a void I’ve been feeling with my workouts, and will push me in a way that I’m struggling to push myself after 7 years in my tiny home gym.
A bit of a rant here. I’m doing some medical expense claiming and my provider has an App that is not designed with the end user in mind. First I have to go to 3 different pages to make a claim. Then after all the claim details are entered, I have to scroll down on a confirmation page that has my address on individual lines that take up to much screen real-estate that the ‘Consent and Declaration’ is hidden under the ‘Submit’ button. So you end up hitting the Submit button only then to learn that you need to scroll down and click the consent, which opens up in another page.
Also, I use my laptop and phone for much of the day and don’t need reading glasses, but my pharmacy prints the details I need to make the above claim in tiny, hard to read font. This is so unnecessary. It’s already really confusing trying to locate all the information, which is spread out into 3 different sections of the prescription receipt, does it also need to be in microscopic font? This is the only thing I’ve had to put reading glasses on to see in the last few months.
I get tired of user interfaces that are designed for the product and not the user. The insurance company probably doesn’t want to claims to be easy to do, they’d rather you had to go through a more challenging process to make a claim. The pharmacy changed their format so that the prescription receipt gets printed on a small sticker, and I’m sure cost saving was more important to them than providing a readable receipt for their aging customers. And this kind of behaviour may or may not be intentional, but it is ignorant of the end user’s experience. I’ve complained before about inconsistencies in remote controls, apps that want your attention at the cost of your convenience, and how it feels like we are decades behind where we should be when doing things like setting up a new printer. I would say that over 95% of the things I rant about are related to products and services providing crappy user experiences.
How hard would it be to have the customer in mind as a priority, rather than an afterthought?
I think that gratitude is something to be celebrated. It is felt more when it is expressed and reflected on, not just experienced in the moment.
Yesterday I turned 58. I got to have an early morning coffee with a good friend, and I got to meet my daughters for a quick lunch. I had a couple cakes and many well wishes at work. Then I went to dinner and a movie with my wife and daughters after work. We were unexpectedly met at dinner by my wife’s sister and my brother-in-law at dinner, which was a very pleasant surprise.
It was a wonderful day all around. It ended with a few thoughtful gifts and cards at home after the show. My daughters have had a tradition of making personalized, hand-drawn birthday cards and I have always adored the thoughtfulness they put into them.
I can’t help but want to share my gratitude towards family, friends, and colleagues. I feel lucky, and blessed. Every year around the sun makes me feel more appreciative for the life I have lived and the opportunity to share more of it with the people I love.
I love this trend that’s going around. Parents are getting their grown kids to do things like jump into their arms, and wrap their feet around them, like they used to do as a little kid, to give a big hug for one last time. The theory is that you don’t remember the last time your kid did this, so do it one last time so that you will remember.
Back on Christmas Day 2024 I wrote ‘Firsts and Lasts’ about this same idea. The post, written to my daughters, starts like this:
“I remember.
I remember the moment in the hospital when I first laid eyes on you; the first time I held you, and kissed your cheek. I remember your first smile, (that wasn’t just passing gas), your first laugh, and the first time you said, ‘Da-da’. I remember your first steps. There were so many firsts in those early days and, although they slowed, they still kept coming. From your first tooth to your first tooth falling out. From your first day at daycare to your first day at school. And from your first birthday to your last one as a teenager.
And so it is that I remember many firsts, but unfortunately I don’t remember too many lasts.
I don’t remember the last time you fell asleep on my chest or came running towards me and jumped unabashedly into my arms for a big hug. I don’t remember the last time we were walking together and you reached up to hold my hand. I don’t remember the last time I did a push up with you on my back, or the last time you danced on my feet, or the last time I gave you a piggyback.
And such is life that as we grow up together, parent and child, we carry with us these moments, momentous ‘first’ occasions, but we never know what other forgotten momentsdisappear as we get older. We remember the firsts, not the lasts. We savour the memories of so many special occasions, and we lament those things that we take for granted only after they no longer happen.”
There are a lot of silly trends that go viral, and send ripples across the internet. This one isn’t silly, it’s heartwarming and wonderful. Parents trying to recapture a special moment with their child long after they’ve done something for the last time. I hope this trends lasts a while and impacts a lot of people.
I had a bit of an epiphany yesterday morning. It wasn’t great. I had a vision for something I had planned to do in the future and I was suddenly faced with the reality that it wasn’t going to live up to the hype I had built up. I envisioned it completely differently to the reality of what it was. Now it has me questioning my plans I thought I had set. It’s not a huge deal but when this kind of reality sets in, it’s a bit of a wake up call.
It reminds me of a video I once made. It was called Brave New World Wide Web. I started building the slideshow and I had a Cure song, Just Like Heaven, in my head. It was going to be perfect, the long lyric-less intro was going to be an ideal opening. I would play the song in the car to and from work, and I couldn’t wait to put the video together.
Then it was finally time to sync the slides to the song, and it… just… didn’t… work. It was awful. I remember walking out of our little home office absolutely dejected. I’d built it up in my mind as the perfect marriage of song and slides and it wasn’t to be. A few hours later I found a song that couldn’t have worked better and all was good.
Yesterday morning I had another one of those unexpected moments. In the end, it’s not going to be a big deal, but in that ‘it just isn’t going to work’ vision-doesn’t-match-reality moment I felt like I was slapped in the face. It was a wake up call I didn’t know I needed.
It’s time to start thinking about a plan B. I’m metaphorically looking for the next song, one that will work. I found one for my video, I’ll find one for this… I just didn’t know until yesterday that I’d have to have an alternate plan. The great news is, I’ve got time. No rush, just a wake up call that there’s a mismatch between my vision and reality that needs to be sorted out. I’m glad that I see it now, and not a year from now.
