And yet here we are.

Okay, not extremely. Just moderately.

—

I have never felt more in control of my attention, since my childhood days.

I know that sounds like a ridiculous claim. An exaggeration. Like I’m some 2026 version of a hippie who just came out of an attention rehab program, marketed as “meditation retreat” by some European monastery.

Side note: At one point I seriously wanted to spend a year at a Buddhist monastery in southwest France. Among many things.

But look at me, I succumbed to capitalism. Instead of sitting in silence and tending the land, I chose to have a career and optimize for shareholder value. Still not entirely sure if that’s my true calling.

Anyways, I’m trying to remember the last time I felt so in tune with the now, and I can only find childhood memories. I know they’re childhood memories because they come with this vast loneliness attached.

—

Loneliness is a funny thing.

It feels like floating. On an endless ocean at night with no life around.

No salt in the air. No wind. No sound of waves. No light. No colour. No music.

Like a silent spell, cast from a mythical creature eternities ago, that turned into more eternities.

But it also feels like sinking. Into a wet swamp that melts my vertical point of reference.

Every movement requires mountain-moving energy which I do not possess. The ground no longer exists as a concept.

Like getting sucked into a wind tunnel as I attempt to run away from it. And the harder or faster I thrash around, the further I disappear.

Loneliness does not discriminate, and there is no end to it.

You and I, we’re terrifyingly and utterly alone. We’re left to our (often poor) devices and judgments every moment. And that is a daunting amount of daunting work.

What’s a healthy and reasonable response to this understanding of loneliness?

Drink it away. Swipe it away. Yell it away. Wish it away.

Lie about it, to each other and to myself. If I don’t admit to it, if I don’t dwell on it, it’s not there. If I say it’s not there, surely it’s not there.

But it is there. The gaping hole. It is always there.

I feel it when I’m alone. I feel it when I’m sitting across from someone. I feel it when I’m in a crowd. I feel it when I’m with my partner and friends and acquaintances and strangers. I feel it sitting in an Uber. I feel it as I yell the lyrics out loud at a concert.

There is no escaping loneliness.

But if it’s always there, then maybe I can just be okay with it. If it’s always there regardless if I fear it, if it’s always there no matter if I feel sad or ashamed or angry or insecure about it… I might as well just sit with it. And see what happens.

—

Fuck, I know I’m all over the place. But hey, I did say that I was going to write about my frequent contemplation of loneliness. (Among other things.)

Fine, I’ve already written plenty about loneliness. But what more timeless subject matter is there, next to loneliness?

And maybe that's the point. Maybe being here and being lonely go hand in hand. Maybe I can't fully have one without the other. Maybe presence means being willing to feel the lonely parts. The bored parts. The painful parts. Not just the good stuff.

Which brings me back to attention, back to where I left off, before yet another tangent on loneliness. Because I meant it: I really don't think I've felt this in control of my attention since I was a kid.

Also, I still have no idea where this is going. Welcome to the club, and thank you for being here.

Being in control of my attention feels great. 10/10. Would recommend. It feels like a superpower, except it shouldn’t be. It allows me to be here instead of anywhere else in the world, or perhaps rather, anywhere else in the timeline.

It doesn’t mean that I’m not distracted. Not at all. But I’m more aware of it when I get sucked into everyday obsessions. And that is empowering because once I’m aware, I get to choose.

Do I shrug and say, fuck it I’ve had a rough day?

Do I choose the hard thing, and put my god damn phone down and go pet my dog instead?

I have a sticky note on my monitor with the words "there are ALWAYS options" written on it, precisely because when things get hard, that's the reminder I need.

So much of the fabric of the world around us is designed to disempower us. It gives us the illusion that we don't have options, that we are not in control of our futures. But I have to believe that, as cheesy as it sounds, I'm in charge of my destiny.

The conditions of the environments and the random happenings of the universe certainly have a way of shaking things up, but we always have the choice. To respond, to engage. (Which is the opposite of consuming.)

With rigidity or fluidity. With cruelty or kindness.

And I’d like to choose an open mind, and more importantly, an open heart.

—

It took my partner pointing it out for me to actually see it.

There’s a Chinese folk proverb that I know: “当局者迷，旁观者清” (dāng jú zhě mí páng guān zhě qīng). Its literal translation is: “The player in the game is confused, but the spectator sees the next move clearly.” The chess-inspired proverb suggests that one can lose perspective on their own life and decisions because fear clouds the board.

My partner was able to see my patterns more clearly because as close we are to each other, he’s not as close to me as... myself.

We went to a concert with friends in December, and afterward he looked over my shoulder at my camera roll. Fifty-something photos and videos of the show, witnessed through a phone screen instead of with my own biological lenses.

I’m ashamed to say that even when my partner pointed it out, I didn’t want to admit this:

I posted stories on Instagram because I wanted to avoid loneliness. I wanted my existence to be witnessed, but I didn’t want to risk rejection.

I posted stories, because it’s far safer than reaching out to someone and trying to make a real connection, because I didn’t want to risk crossing the arbitrary (aka, made up) lines between myself and others.

I doom-scrolled on Instagram because I wanted to avoid boredom. I wanted my time on earth to be fun and/or interesting, but I didn’t want to work for it.

I scrolled, because I wanted to turn my brain off, because I didn’t want to put in the effort to make my own time fun and/or interesting.

That’s a big reason why I deleted Instagram in January. Which is a big reason why I’ve been able to reclaim my attention since.

And I must say, half a year later, what a joy it has been to choose what to tune in and what to tune out. I’ve written more, here on this Substack. I’m making slow but steady progress on my “fitness era” goals. I’ve spent more time outdoors. I’ve spent more time with my people.

Dare I say I’m more happy?

—

I wonder if I’ve overcorrected, to be honest.

I can go weeks without taking a single photo. I don’t remember to commemorate reunions with friends who I haven’t seen in months. Or when something is actually worth remembering.

Maybe that’s its own problem. Memory needs anchors, something to look back at.

I trust that overcorrecting is a path to balance.

—

Which brings me, finally, to football.

The timing of it was interesting this year, because Canada was hosting. First time ever. First men’s World Cup match ever played on Canadian soil, part of the first World Cup split across three countries instead of one, first with 48 teams instead of 32. Hard not to catch some of that by osmosis, living in Canada.

Going to a game live sounds like a nightmare, honestly. Guaranteed hearing damage, says my partner.

But even without going live, the games gave us a reason to gather.

Whoever had the biggest TV and sufficient AC. A bar packed way past capacity. A group chat that blows up when a certain red card was handed out, and then reversed. An excuse to sit, laugh, yell profanities, cry together.

But mostly it was the ninety minutes. No pausing. No scrolling while it played, not really, not without missing out. Something that feels scarce and sacred in the now mature streaming era.

I still don’t know why the whistle gets blown half the time. And the theatre of football has been both amusing and frustrating to witness, often at the same time. Watching grown men sitting on the field with their best puppy dog eyes at the referee, I entertained myself by voicing over “I've fallen and I can't get up.”

And then there’s all the discussions about corruption, fairness, sportsmanship. What’s rigged and what’s not.

I don’t know if VARgentina is real. Honestly, my baseline assumption is that everything is rigged, some amount, always. So in a way, it doesn’t matter.

Spain won in the final game yesterday, a triumphant 1-0 over Argentina scored in extra time. An underdog story I can’t help but fall for. And if they did it in spite of the rigging, even better.

There’s a hole the size of a football where my temporary obsession was, now that it’s over.

I don't know what's next. Something will come, probably.

There’s a chickadee chirping loudly right outside our door, he told me.

I heard the chirping.

It seems to be injured, he told me.

I heard the hurting.

We went out the door together, and assessed the situation.

The chickadee was sitting on the patch of soil right below our front steps, a foot or two from our dryer vent.

It looked to be young, though I wasn’t sure if it was still considered a fledgling. Or maybe it was an adult bird, but because of its helpless position I was biased to think of it as a youngling.

At first glance, I couldn’t even tell that it was hurt. Because it was so tiny, I had to look very closely to notice the head injury. As I kneeled down and got closer to examine it, it didn’t even make an attempt to take flight. I felt my heart sinking, and my eyes well up, as I came to an understanding of the situation.

With its feathers all fluffed up, it sang loudly for such a tiny creature. It made one call only, repeatedly, every 8 seconds or so.

I’ve always adored wild birds, but I’ve never gotten quite that deep into the rabbit hole of ornithology to understand the meanings of different calls. My uneducated guess was that it was the equivalent to an SOS.

As my partner and I watched over the little screeching bird, we heard another call. Coming from another chickadee nearby. First it chirped at us while perched in the shrubs nearby—the ones we’ve been neglecting to trim for the entire spring and early summer. Then, as it noticed us not being a real threat, it flew to the fledgling’s side.

It was the mama bird, my partner and I deduced. Though we could’ve been wrong, of course. Neither of us were ornithologists.

But let’s assume we were right.

—

The mama bird kept bringing little pieces of seeds and straws, and made short little calls at the injured fledgling.

The fledgling ate some of the food, but continued to whine. And the mama bird continued to make the same short, sweet calls that I can only imagine means “there, there”, as she came by again and again.

—

My partner and I discussed our options.

There were only two options, really. In this situation; but honestly, also in life.

1. Do nothing. And accept the outcome.

2. Do something. And accept the outcome.

I proposed taking it to a wild bird rescue.

My partner wondered if any rescue would care enough about a mere common chickadee; it’s not like we were rescuing a golden eagle.

While I had similar doubts, I decided that we had to try. So I quickly looked for rescues around us. It turns out that there was only one wild bird rescue organization in our area. I scanned their website as fast as humanly possible for (1) their opening hours, and (2) the types of birds they rescue.

At first, I was discouraged to see the mentions of the more “interesting” wild birds on their website. But their website listed the birds they couldn’t take—Mallard Ducks, Swans, Cormorants, Geese, all due to avian influenza. Chickadees weren’t on it. So I picked up the phone.

After a few questions, they told me, yeah, bring the chickadee in.

—

We felt bad about stealing it from its mama, but ultimately decided that it would have a better chance at survival under the care of (bird) medical professionals.

My partner picked up the chickadee and carefully placed it in a cardboard box with some torn-up paper. It didn’t resist at all, and stopped calling loudly almost as soon as it was in the safety of the box.

The 15-minute drive felt long, as I held the box in my lap. It felt like we were on a mission. And I suppose we were.

I peeked into the box every few moments, as if I would find it empty all of a sudden if I didn’t check on the bird. It was so light, as if I wasn’t holding anything at all. Nothing but a tiny little life.

When we got to the rescue, we received a little piece of paper with a reference code, in exchange for the injured bird. We could ask for an update in a few days using the reference code by email, the volunteer told us.

Knowing that gave us some relief, and we continued on with our day.

—

Over the next week, the chickadee was on my mind whenever I had a moment to myself.

In my fantasy, it made a full recovery and was released into the wild. I wondered if it would’ve been able to find its mama. I held my tiny hopes and dreams for the tiny creature delicately in the back of my mind.

After I asked for an update through email, it took the volunteers at the wild bird rescue two weeks to respond. We continued with our work, travels, entertainment, lives. I had started to forget about my tiny hopes and dreams.

I read the email just a few minutes before going into a meeting I had to be “on” for. And as soon as I opened it and saw the length of the email, I knew it was not news I’d like.

Unfortunately, despite their best efforts, the chickadee passed away naturally overnight, they told me. The bird had suffered a critical head injury with a lot of swelling and signs of a serious concussion. There were also wounds to its right wing. The visible signs of injury are often just a small indication of the severity of the internal issues.

They said they were sorry that they didn’t have better news for us. They thanked us for bringing it into their care. They said it allowed them the opportunity to do everything they could to help it recover.

But I stopped reading.

I had a meeting to go into.

My tiny heartbreak was an inconvenience, and I had to put it aside.

I went through the motions of running the meeting. I don’t remember what anyone said, and was grateful for Granola.

—

How do you get over tiny heartbreaks, and continue to try to do something the next time?

The thing is, I don’t think I get over my heartbreaks. I just learn to coexist with them.

We choose our tiny heartbreaks when we choose to care.

We choose to do something instead of nothing.

Even when we know it may not lead to the outcome we hope and dream for. Even when we know it likely leads to another heartbreak.

And sometimes it can be discouraging to choose to care. So sometimes I don’t. And I live with the outcome of doing nothing.

And sometimes I don’t have the capacity to care. Or there might be another something that I have to choose over what’s at hand. So sometimes I don’t. And I live with the outcome of my prioritizations.

But if I’m able to do something instead of nothing, I think it’s better to have tried than to preserve my heart from breaking.

Heartbreaks are wounds of love.

—

Rest easy, little one.

The cursor blinks.

My eyes, unblinking.

Eventually, I take a breath.

—

Here we go.

—

Typing the first word always feels monumental. In a steady and weighty kind of way.

Typing it feels like serious business. Like whatever word follows has to be the most special word ever. Like “effervescent”, or “ethereal”, or “esoteric”.

But it never mattered.

My first sentence always shows up cautiously. Like a whisper into a tunnel I can’t see the end of. Like pressing the first few notes on a piano whose black-and-white keys I haven’t touched in years.

Like I’m not entirely sure if the next sentence—or even the next phrase, or the next word—will come.

But it always does.

—

I don’t particularly think about how well I write, or what my thesis is, or even if I’ve told a complete story, or anything remotely compelling or interesting.

If anything, sometimes I look at other people’s writing with awe and curiosity—and if I’m being honest, a touch of envy—wondering how they managed to assemble their words into what I can only describe as music or magic.

I don’t really see my own writing the same way, but I guess I try my best to write something that gets as close as possible to the tunes and tempo of my own heart.

And if that means run-off sentences, em dashes that are falling out of fashion thanks to AI, half-formed musings masquerading as complete thoughts, so be it.

To be candid, it never feels fully in tune. But a thought, a moment, can’t stay in draft for long before it loses its texture and timbre, and its meaning to me. So even when it doesn’t feel quite right—whatever that means—I hit publish once it feels right enough.

Like what I’m about to do.

It’s been nearly five years at this point, and yet some days I still think of her and must actively remind myself that, oh right, mom isn’t just on a long trip back home.

Or I suppose that’s exactly where she’d gone: on a long trip back home.

—

We’re helping my father downsize. After my dad took the most precious-to-him items to his new apartment, my sister and I are now kind of forced to look through all of my late mom’s stuff.

When my dad moved to this house he just moved out of, my mom had just died. We moved so much stuff over to this house, because there was room in the house. But also because none of us had any emotional bandwidth left for decision making about her stuff.

Even though I think we all knew deep down that a lot of it wasn’t even ever going to get unpacked.

Ironically, last month a lot of it got unpacked just so that they can get packed again.

I got maybe three hours of sleep last night, after I sorted through some of what remained in the house we’re starting to clean up.

As I went through the house by myself in the quiet hours of the weekday night, some tears were shed. Multiple times.

I’ll share why I cried the first time during the night, and spare the details on the rest.

—

In the office at the front of the house, usually blessed by abundant sunshine, sits the old piano that we migrated from my teenagehood home five years ago. It was also the room where most of the books that belonged to my parents collected dust, on floor-to-ceiling shelves on the opposing wall to the piano.

On some of the shelves sat paintings and framed artwork from my mom. Those I will likely keep. My partner and I have some floating shelves at home where we rotate different art pieces from “the archive.”

There were also a variety of books and book-like items. Cookbooks. Stephen King novels. Beach reads. Memoirs of Chinese authors I didn’t know. An orphaned instruction manual for a kitchen appliance my dad took to his apartment. A map with highlighter marks on it, whose meaning died with my mom. A tiny self-help booklet that I’ve seen around since I was 11. A series of books that collected hundreds and thousands of Pulitzer-winning B&W photographs showing the cruelties and failures of humanity which both shaped and traumatized me as a kid (I’m convinced this was why I wanted to be a journalist for the longest time). Most of these books will likely be donated, some of them I will keep.

There were an entire shelf worth of books on Rudyard Kipling (The Jungle Book) that people very close to my mom—what today would be called her chosen family, I suppose—sent to her when she was doing her Masters thesis. Books that travelled from bookstores in Minnesota to Hangzhou to Ottawa on ships across decades. These books will likely sit at Value Village for a long time before disappearing into obscurity one way or another, their history of worldly travels never known to anyone who walk by.

And on another shelf sat 6 or 7 gigantic binders.

Amidst everything else, it makes no sense to keep them. They contained a combination of Montessori casa program curriculum and philosophy, printed reference materials, personal essays and notes and photographs and art and lesson plans. Most of them are neatly organized and in clear plastic sheet protectors, making them look newer than they are—at this point close to twenty years old.

Like with most things left behind by loved ones who have passed on, it makes no sense to keep them, but still incredibly difficult to get rid of.

These binders are the artifacts of a portion of my mom’s life’s work. A reminder of how hard she worked when we moved to Canada. The efforts of her striving for a better life for all of us. How much heart she poured into her work in education.

And now, all of it will be gone and forgotten. No longer be waiting on the shelf to be discovered and dusted off.

—

I don’t have my mom to hold tight anymore. And the child in me wants so desperately to hold on to any fragment she leaves behind, fearing that they too will fade away, like my memories of her.

But I also know that we can’t inherit all of our parents’ careers. Nor can we inherit their lives and hopes and dreams.

We can’t inherit anyone’s everything.

Because we need the room to build our own. Careers, lives, hopes and dreams.

Sitting on the floor in front of those shelves, with one of those binders open, I was floored by the quiet knowing of what I must do, not just today, but all the tomorrows too.

And what is it that I must do?

I must let go of artifacts like these binders, mementos of my mom’s interrupted life.

And it doesn’t stop there. At the binders. At today.

Most of us don’t have the heart to get rid of everything all at once. And so what we decide to keep today gets shed tomorrow, because life is for the living.

So I must let go of her, fragment by fragment, for the rest of my life.

It’s a very sad and painful conclusion, I know. And yet the long tail of grief is a bittersweet reminder of the love I still carry for her.

The long tail of grief is the love I carry for her.

That’s right. Today I’m here to toot my own horn.

God, does it feel bizarre to take pride in myself in public.

—

Last year, my brother-in-law generously gifted me a 5k registration for the race weekend. Despite having run for a year, it hadn't occurred to me to enter a race until then.

By that point, I was averaging about 20 kilometres weekly, so I didn’t think I needed to specifically train for it. Speed wasn't something I cared about either; I don't even remember my finish time.

I almost got a banana tattoo after that 5k race. I didn’t.

I remember my brother-in-law saying, “Hey, maybe next year you can do the 10k.”

I can do better than that, I thought to myself.

When I signed up for the half-marathon, back in August last year, my only goal was to finish it.

I don’t need to finish fast. I don’t need to finish strong. I don’t need to finish pretty.

I just need to finish.

—

To make sure I did, I loosely followed Hal Higdon’s Novice 1 training guide over the winter months.

Most weeks I ran three times a week, and most of the time, I ran on the treadmill in my basement, listening to a podcast or audiobook.

I had to slow down during the snowboarding season, but I was semi-consistent—consistent enough—with my training.

I’m not the kind of person to take on a goal that I don’t feel ready for. This is because I’m not a courageous person. This is a character flaw of mine that I’m still trying to overcome.

Because of my obsession with feeling absolutely ready, I did a practice half marathon in March.

You know, to prove to myself that I can do this, before the real thing… even though by then I’d already done so. (I completed two half-marathon distance runs in the fall, for fun.)

—

As spring—and race day—approached, the two people who I thought was going to be running it with me dropped out for different reasons.

I felt mildly disappointed. But also relieved.

Disappointed because of friendship. Because doing a thing with friends is nice. Because sharing is caring?

Relieved because direct competition doesn’t really work on me. I think comparing myself to others make me freeze up and/or get distracted, when I need to be focusing on myself. Listen to my rant about my experience learning snowboard for more on that.

Doing the race myself, at least in my mind, made it feel simpler.

And I like simple.

—

By the time I got to the starting line last Sunday, I had accumulated a questionable ankle and a full week of very subpar sleep.

A week before the race, I’d taken one awkward step on the pickleball court. I suck at pickleball, but that’s irrelevant—just thought you should know. I tried my best not to catastrophize and took my taper week extra easy, hoping one week was enough time for it to heal enough.

Then, three nights before the race, I drove five hours out of town for some friends’ wedding reception. My partner and I literally got home less than 12 hours before my race.

Yet, there I was. As I stretched my hamstrings and rotated my ankles among the other runners in my corral, the speakers blasted fun facts to distract me from the chaos:

• Tamarack Ottawa Race Weekend is the biggest multi-day race event in Canada.

• Nearly 40,000 people come from out of town to take part in this race event.

• 12,000 people were set to run the half marathon alongside me.

• I was going to try an XACT fruit bar during my race.

2 hours and 12 minutes later, I crossed the finish line.

Running a half marathon as a race is so different versus when it isn’t a race. Maybe this is unique to my experience, but time seemed to zoom by; it hardly felt like I’d been at it for 2 hours. And yet it was one of the most mentally challenging things I’ve ever done.

With every stride, the weight of exhaustion pressed heavier.

During the final 8 kilometres, I kept a continuous motivational monologue in my head. I had to.

Don’t stop.

I had to stop.

Keep going.

I did.

You can do this.

I did.

—

I spent the post-race week fully resting. Aka, sitting in front of my computer.

Multiple mornings, I felt the urge to lace up and go for a run. I honestly think at this point, running is becoming something like Focus Factor for me. Luckily, we had a friend from out of town staying with us this week, whose company made it easier for me to sit the fuck down, because I just needed to tell myself that I gotta prioritize friendship.

Our friend went home Friday afternoon, and I went for a run for the first time since the race Saturday morning.

I’d been looking forward to it all week. I thought I was ready. I felt ready.

I was going to play it by ear, but I thought that meant I was going to run an easy 5k, and then see if I wanna go further.

I had to stop at 3 kilometres.

Even though my ankle was doing alright, I pushed myself to run at a speed that I wasn’t quite ready to sustain across longer distances. But truthfully I’d say 90% of it was a mental blocker.

A part of me yearned to run, while another part just wanted to be a lazy bum for a little while longer. Please sit the fuck down.

The post-race blues is real, the emotional cooldown that I’ve only heard about but never experienced.

Running a race was more than the race itself.

For half a year, it provided me with little bits of structure, purpose, discipline, conversation topic, and more importantly, something to look forward to. And now, it’s behind me.

It feels not unlike how I’d feel after coming back from a trip that I’d been planning and dreaming about for months.

I have to trust that I will get back to it.

I have to trust that my body and mind will be ready again.

I have to trust that if I’ve proven it to myself a week ago, I can do it again.

As I sat my lazy bum at my computer today, writing this, I felt a spark of determination and I had to act on it while I held that spark:

I’m going for a marathon next year. I just registered. Anyone else?

I don’t love Mother’s Day.

—

For years, the marketing machine has made me feel like shit whenever Mother’s Day approached. All the promo emails, ads on YouTube, even old-fashioned billboards, reminding me of my shame and then pushing me things to buy as a painkiller for those feelings of shame.

Sunday Brunch.

Shame of not calling often enough.

Beauty and self-care products.

Shame of not remembering.

Books and tea.

Shame of forgetting, after I’ve remembered. Shame of Googling for the 5th time “mothers day when 2026”,

Jewelry.

Shame of growing up and growing apart.

Flowers and plants, of all shapes and sizes. This year I opened an email selling me “a flowering hedge” because clearly that’s what every mom is missing in their life. Something else to take care of.

Shame of having a life. Or not even having a life, but whatever it is that I have, I’m sure as hell reminded that l didn’t include my mom.

I have to point out that I don’t feel much of the same shame about Father’s Day, both because of my relationship with my dad, but also, well, you must admit that the marketing machine doesn’t seem to use the shame angle as much for dads.

Anyways, at some point I caved to the feelings of shame. Some time during the middle of my uWaterloo years—I wanna say third year—I started sending flowers to my mom every May.

Side note: I’m not a cut flowers person. Whenever I see bouquets, I picture flowers growing peacefully in a garden, and then suddenly getting mutilated by garden shears and packed into wrapping paper, their dying bodies arranged to appease our eyes for no more than two weeks. It doesn’t bother me too much. I don’t judge anyone for getting or wanting cut flowers, but for the most part, I choose not to (I didn’t even get real flowers for my wedding). Except for Mother’s Day.

That’s what shame does to me, it makes me do things that I otherwise wouldn’t.

—

And maybe we ought to feel this shame.

Maybe we really are fucking entitled and ungrateful kids, neglecting to show up for our mothers who have given us—well, life, and therefore—everything.

Maybe we need a reminder—once a year apparently enough—to show some appreciation towards the women whose wombs we materialized from.

I’m not cranky because I don’t think mothers deserve the love and respect demanded of us on Mother’s Day. In fact I think most mothers deserve so much more.

I’m cranky because Mother’s Day is mostly just a seasonal marketing campaign to capitalize on our shame. And I hate that we buy into that shit. Because actions from shame are not actions of love. And my mom—and most moms, but let’s be real, not all moms—deserves love.

I’m cranky because I’m sick of being told by the marketing machine when to have certain feelings about the people in our lives.

Mothers. Fathers. Family. Queen Victoria. George Lucas. Some British guy who clearly developed some sort of Stockholm syndrome with Ireland.

Okay, I’m about to go on a tangent. Let’s come back to mothers.

—

In the last year or two, I’ve started getting asked more and more whether I have children. (People are so nosy!) I’ve also noticed that I almost always feel like I have to explain myself when I tell them that I don’t. As if to make my existence equally valid to whoever is asking.

Some mothers have said to me that motherhood is like nothing else. That I must want it. That whatever love I experience in life will always be smaller, less important, somehow, than the love they have for their children. That I’ll never get it unless I become a mother.

Ouch.

Maybe they’re right. I don’t know. But it is a particular kind of loneliness, being a childless adult as I get older. It’s a loneliness I’ve chosen and therefore accepted, but it still sits heavy sometimes.

My twin sister and I arrived at Mother’s Day 2026 in completely different places. This was her first year celebrating being a mother, and I’m so proud of her and love my niece with all my heart. I love that for once, our family is growing. But I’m also sad. Our lives have diverged in ways that feel exponential, and honestly, I’m terrified.

I used to wonder how either of us could ever become a mother without our own mother here to show us how. But my sister just did it. She’s doing it.

It’s crazy scary to do anything for the first time. I’m sure first time motherhood is high up there on the list of the most scary things one can do.

—

Of course, I’m also cranky because I don’t have a mother to send flowers to on Mother’s Day anymore.

For a few years after my mom passed away, I continued the habit. I’d make sure bouquets would arrive at my dad’s house, and I’d visit the beautiful tiffany blue side table where my mom’s picture and a few candles sat atop of.

But sending flowers to a ghost didn’t have the same effect of numbing my shame, even temporarily. So two or maybe three years ago, I stopped.

Some years, it can feel good to perform certain acts of tradition. Like getting together for a picnic, or going to the tulip festival, or lighting an incense or a candle.

I spent today doing none of the above.

I slept in.

Did some apartment hunting research on my laptop, since we’re helping my dad with an upcoming move.

Went on a walk with my partner and our dog.

Listened to my dad’s verbal essay on why my low expectations of him during this upcoming move was still too much to ask for.

Cried.

Decided to stop crying. Told my partner that I wanted to bake cookies.

Ate a gyro sandwich at the Greek food truck that recently opened up near us. The one with the umbrellas in blue and white stripes. The one that had been preparing to open since last fall. I had a skip in my step when I left the food truck.

Loaded a shopping cart at No Frills with chicken thighs, veggies, eggs, chocolate chips, and brown sugar.

Got a chicken soup going in the slow cooker.

Made some chocolate chip cookies with a twist.

Went for a run while the soup simmered and the cookies cooled.

Walked the dog again.

Took a shower. Added orzo and couscous to the chicken soup.

Watched a movie, curled up with my partner and a bowl of chicken orzo soup.

Ate four cookies. I can eat whatever I want. I run.

—

When I came back from my run in the afternoon, the house smelled like a warm hug, like something that wanted to take care of me, like my mother whispering “sleep tight.”

No, neither the soup nor the cookies are heirloom recipes.

I hadn’t used my stand mixer in over half a year. It took a few minutes to clean all the parts, and another minute to remember which attachment I was supposed to use.

I liked using my hands. I liked the weighing and measuring, the slow math and intuition of it. I liked the rhythm of my stand mixer. A drum beat with a familiar hum.

Gotta say, best batch of cookies I’ve ever made. DM me for recipe.

Baking is one of those things that I’d forgotten brings me something I can’t quite name. I was going to say joy, but it’s not always positivity that I’m working through when I roll pieces of cookie dough into ball shapes.

In another life, I’d have a little bakery with a cafe. Somewhere with good natural light and plants and mismatched chairs and the smell of something always in the oven.

Or maybe I can do that in this life.

I suppose what I felt today when I was baking was a sense of groundedness.

Like gravity.

—

Happy Mother’s Day.

Then I’d truly be free.

—

It’s not really about being understood, though that’s nice, of course.

I’m very (let’s be real, overly) conscious of how I’m perceived, because I don’t want to be misunderstood. If that makes any sense.

I don’t want you to think that I am something that I am not.

I don’t want you to expect me to be something that I might not be able—or want—to be.

I suppose it comes down to wanting to avoid—or at least reduce—disappointments. Both being disappointed and being a disappointment. Some classic stuff for second-gen immigrants.

Unfortunately, despite my persistent efforts (aka stubbornness) to avoid disappointments, those efforts have been mostly futile.

Turns out disappointments are inevitable. And I had to—have to still, every day—learn to accept that.

—

Before moving on, I feel that I must go back and double-click into what the difference is between not being understood vs. being misunderstood. In my head, at least.

Not being understood is like, someone walking up to me, and saying, “I have no idea what it’s like to be you. But here is what it’s like to be me. Does any of that resonate with you in any way? No? Ah okay, oh well.”

And being misunderstood is like, someone walking up to me, smacking me on the shoulder or back in that overly familiar way, as if we’ve been childhood best bros all our lives, and saying, “I totally get you! Family [or men, or teenagers, or any other generalized label], am I right? You can’t live with them, you can’t live without them! Haha!”

In the former situation, I’d feel a bit lonely. But lonely is an acceptable, and sometimes even welcome, feeling.

But in the latter situation, every atom of my body screams, “Fuck off, you don’t get me at all.”

I only get triggered by misunderstandings, not a lack of understanding.

—

In no particular order, here are the things I’d write about, If I didn’t care about being perceived and misunderstood.

These are the things I’m running from when I train for my half marathon. The things occupying my mind when I procrastinate on filing my taxes, night after night. The things that keep me awake on a week night even though I need to be up at 7am.

If I didn’t care, I’d write about certain disappointments. And how even though I logically know that letting go is good for me, I can’t seem to. I chew on them like bland, grainy, overworked gum, after all the softeners and flavourings have dissolved, clinging on to the aftertaste from certain yesterdays.

If I didn’t care, I’d write about trauma still being processed. Both capital “T” and little “t”. Grief still being processed—also, capital “G” and little “g”. No, not in the past tense, not as some seemingly perfect post-mortem analysis. But still unfolding, with uncertainties of where it could lead.

If I didn’t care, I’d write about rage. I feel gaslit when people pretend like everything is awesome, when so fucking much is so fucked. My rage is tempered by the weight of shame, for I lack the gut to convert rage to courage, to action. But maybe even writing about it is a form of action. And maybe the more I write about it (or sing about it, or laugh about it, or draw about it, or create games about it…), the more likely I can find the courage to disentangle and move through the rage. Rage is just hurt. Hurt needs a place to go.

If I didn’t care, I’d write about the little details that I pretend not to notice every day. Most times I simply don’t have it in me to deal with it in the moment, so I put it off for as long as I possibly can. I know it’s neither healthy nor sustainable, but man, sometimes I just need a break from having to deal with yet another thing. Give me a fucking break. Fuck.

Sorry, I already said rage, right?

If I didn’t care, I’d write dirty poetry. From sweets to sins.

If I didn’t care, I’d write about my frequent contemplation of loneliness and death. Some of it is actually very, very warm and fuzzy. No, really.

If I didn’t care, I’d write about hope. I’m a huge bummer of a pessimist (see above), but my hope is greater and unending. I mean, what choice is there? It’s hope, or nothing.

—

If I didn’t care, I could be unapologetically honest, equally so in private and public.

But who am I kidding? I care.

A lot.

All the time.

Caring is like, my whole thing!

So maybe I can care, and still find—or rather, create—the courage to write about these things.

Maybe it’s time I run towards them.

So where do I begin?

P.S. This week I moved this Substack to my own domain (thoughts.marywithalilamb.com), and that gave me a little dose of joy.

P.P.S. I just finished my taxes. Give me a fucking break.

Embed audio: Unedited, 2 minutes and 33 seconds of sounds of water.

—

I played an hour of piano today.

Half of the time I flipped through a classical book of sheet music I had borrowed from my local library. It’s spiral-bound, and despite being clearly well loved, it’s in pretty decent condition. The book contained the best hits of piano, from Beethoven to Scott Joplin.

I’d play a page or two of one piece, and then move on to the next. I made mental notes of the ones I liked best, wanting and intending to return to them.

Wow, this is beautiful. I said out loud.

A small handful of times, I let myself get carried away by the momentum of the pages I’d played, and ride into the next wave with whatever energy I carried with me in the moment.

Improv, if you will.

I’d improv for 5 minutes or so, maybe 10 or 15 if I get reallllly carried away, and then go back to flipping through the book.

—

I’m afraid to say that I like playing improv on the piano, because I think that might give you the impression that I’m good at it.

I don’t think I’m particularly good at it.

I mean, I don’t think I’m particularly bad at it, either.

Honestly, I don’t think about music in the good ↔ bad spectrum at all.

We might each have preferences for the keys, tempo, rhythm, texture, timbre, and variability in music, but music does not exist to please. Music exists to express.

Stories of pain, hope, and love.

Feelings of rage, despair, and contentment.

Sugar.

Laying down after a particularly exhausting day.

Spice.

A rush, a glance, a look in somebody’s eyes.

And everything nice.

Raindrops on my forehead, and wind in my hair.

—

When my fingers hit the keys today, I looked out the windows at my backyard.

And it finally clicked.

Water.

Beach side waves.

Undercurrents.

Ponds.

Fountains.

Waterfalls.

A rainy April Sunday afternoon in 2026.

Over and over, I tell stories about bodies of water.

—

It was at a little place called The Green Needle, tucked away on the second floor of Damas Supermarket, a Halal store in the Britannia.

I used to live in the Britannia as a teenager, so it was an area I had an emotional attachment to. Nowadays when I visit, the streets feel liminal. Both deeply familiar and entirely foreign, like a memory I can’t quite step back into.

We used to live just a 10-minute walk from the Britannia beach, and maybe 3 blocks from Damas Supermarket, just south of Richmond Road. (I think—I’m directionally challenged.)

While I recall a handful of sketchy incidents, it wasn’t until I hit my twenties that I learned it was and still is a pretty rough neighbourhood.

—

Sure enough, when I arrived at the area for my sewing class, there was a heavy police presence.

It's kind of funny how the sight of those flashing police lights illuminating the night felt so familiar, that I didn’t even make a mental note of that until this moment, as I type this sentence. When I saw the police cars at the side of the street, I just shrugged, took a (loser) lap around the block, and settled for a spot in the nearly-empty lot of a Cineplex just across the road.

I made a mental note that the usual display areas on the exterior walls of the Cineplex were devoid of movie posters. I wondered if that was an indication of a lack of good movies in theatre right now.

I wouldn’t know. I was never able to keep up with pop culture, and somewhere along the way I kinda just gave up.

—

Because I had to trek a block back while carrying a heavy sewing machine, I was 10 minutes late.

I hurried across the street alongside a young boy with caramel skin who wasn’t dressed nearly warm enough. I briefly wondered why this kid was out alone at 6:30pm, crossing the road with no adult supervision. And then I remembered that I had been that kid myself in my childhood. In that one brief encounter with this kid, I was his guardian for that one street crossing. I stared down an impatient driver who almost rolled over us, and made a point to watch the boy scurry safely into the supermarket below my sewing class.

As I ascended the narrow staircase, the familiar sounds of the neighbourhood followed me. The distant laughter, the occasional shouts, and the rhythmic muffled hiss of a bus braking.

The second floor of the building was like a capsule of the community.

I walked past a Christian community centre, a nail salon, a barber, and a Muslim praying centre (I think—I wasn’t paying that much attention), before finally finding the door of The Green Needle.

—

The sewing school was run by Ludmila, a woman with a Slavic accent. Her voice had a grounded, sturdy quality, built on flat, centred vowels that seemed to anchor the room. When she spoke, it sounded rhythmic, almost like singing. Yet punctuated by crisp, distinct consonants, which gave her instructions a sharp sense of precision and a comforting feeling of certainty.

There were two university-aged women there together. I thought they dressed well. Later on, I learned that they were working on their fashion portfolios.

When I was in high school, I had briefly wanted to go to fashion school myself. I’d even convinced my parents to get me a machine for a Grade 11 fashion class. The same machine that I carried into this SOS Sewing class.

As a teenager I was convinced that I’d never get married myself (wrong) nor cared much for weddings (right), but still wanted to design wedding dresses for all my girl friends. This is 100% true. Just ask any one of my girl friends from high school.

Of course, fashion as a career was one of many dreams reserved for the privileged. Certainly not for immigrant kids like me.

My mind briefly fluttered to the boy from the crosswalk. If he ever dreams of fashion as he grows up, I hope he can do more than dream.

—

But a few days ago, I was at the sewing school for a much simpler reason. I was looking for help to get unstuck on a project. Something I intended to complete months ago, ahead of my niece’s birth.

My niece just celebrated her 100 days a week ago.

The project itself only required basic sewing skills, but turns out I didn’t have basic sewing skills. I’d forgotten how to operate my machine, and the thread kept bunching up into a bird’s nest every time I pressed the pedal. After a few unfruitful tries, I decided that I wasn’t getting anywhere at home and looked for expert help.

I had dragged this project on for too long, and I really wanted to finish it.

Ludmila demystified my bird’s nest problem, showing me the correct path the thread needed to take on my machine. Then, with stern kindness of a good teacher, she undid all of it and told me to do it myself.

I did okay.

I booked two hours, which I quickly realized I did not need, but I enjoyed every minute.

An hour after I arrived, a couple joined us. They said they run a wedding rental business and brought in a few cloth napkins with frayed seams. They explained that they have hundreds of them that need fixing, and getting them professionally fixed would cost more than purchasing new ones. So they wanted to learn to do it themselves. I thought that was sweet. A practical, shared hustle.

Ludmila took one look at their machine, which they’d bought second-hand just the night before, and told them it was a project in itself and needed servicing. Without skipping a beat, she lent them one of her own school machines to take home, free of charge, so they could get to work.

—

At one point, Ludmila looked around the room. “I like having a bigger class," she declared to all of us, "It feels like Montessori. Everyone’s working on their own thing.”

When she said the word “working,” it had a soft yet solid momentum.Work. A verb with weight and ease at the same time.

Her eyes smiled.

My mom was a Montessori teacher for most of her career in Canada, and also had eyes that smiled.

Words can’t do it justice, but the environment Ludmila had created was something special. The Latin music on the speakers played over a symphony of four sewing machines, each on a different rhythm and frequency. Listening to those mechanical beats weave into the music, I basked in the grounded calm of the room.

As I said my goodbyes and thank yous at the end of the night, I found myself looking for a reason to return. Stepping back out into the cold night, the sewing machine felt a little lighter in my arms than it had two hours ago.

Maybe (big maybe), I will pick up fashion someday after all.

For now, though, I’m going home to finish what I started for my niece.

—

A few months after I first picked up running, I wrote about it on this Substack. Specifically, how the experience somehow relates to overstimulation. Tangential, but I can't seem to escape the constant contemplation of overstimulation. All the ways we are overstimulated, and all the ways we do it to ourselves and each other.

That was nearly two years ago, which means that I’ve been semi-consistently running for nearly two years. Wow.

Anyways, I signed up for this half-marathon last fall, fresh off finishing my first 10k race. At the time, I’d already unintentionally and unexpectedly run a couple of half-marathons on my own. I was in the best shape I’d ever managed, though that’s not saying much given my (lack of) history with fitness. But nevertheless, I felt good. Almost unstoppable.

And then came winter.

—

Somewhere in the filing cabinet next to my desk, I have a piece of paper that tells me (and whomever it concerns) that I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). It’s a bit silly, really. The piece of paper, I mean.

“Disorder” implies a total system failure, which makes it seem like there is something inherently broken with me. And maybe there is. But while I think my brokenness is unique to me, everyone have their own special brand of brokenness to bear. We’re all special snowflakes, but snowflakes just the same.

For me, my SAD doesn’t mean I hate winter. There are actually elements of it I absolutely adore. Like driving through the snow with lo-fi jazz playing on Spotify Apple Music. Or the way a fresh, fluffy, dump of powder covers up the sharp edges of life and quiets my mind. Or the sparkles on the trees and the crust of my boots.

But man, winter is just so long here.

I don’t hate winter, but I am unamused by the darkness that bookends my workday. I am tired of checking the weather app for snowstorms. I am sick of the ritual of putting on layers: the hats, the inner layers, the jackets, the boots. I am disgusted by the surging totals of my utility expenses. And honestly, I am so fucking bored of the walls of my office being my only video chat background.

As winter drags on, it brings this heavy, dense sort of fatigue. Like a weighted blanket—except I’m a helpless little kitten underneath it—winter envelops me completely, pinning me to the mattress, rendering me wanting nothing to do with my treadmill.

I try to fight it most of the time, but fighting is effortful, and sometimes—just sometimes—I don’t have the fight in me. I let the downcurrents pull me along wherever the universe decides. And sometimes that means I end up in a pit for a while.

See? That right there is 80% of the SAD talking.

—

But it’s okay to end up in a pit for a while, once in a while.

For the last few months, my half-marathon training has been inconsistent. Partly because my partner and I were snowboarding twice a week, and my body was begging to be respected as a geriatric millennial. Partly because I find indoor running about as engaging as watching paint dry. Partly because of other priorities that demanded my attention. And yeah, partly because of my SAD.

I know. Excuses.

Naturally, due to this inconsistency, I’d been struggling to make progress. No matter how hard I tried, I simply couldn't increase my distance, and I found myself actually getting slower.

Last week, we experienced a brief taste of false spring. A couple of days with soft, sunny skies.

The highlight of my week was taking advantage of that moment to run outdoors for the first time in 2026.

When I began to shift from a walk to a trot at the start of my run, it felt awkward. My body didn’t want to obey the conductor that was my brain, and my brain felt like molasses. At best, like pudding.

Amidst the clunkiness, all I could tell myself was: don’t stop. That being my only objective. Just one foot in front of the other. It doesn’t matter how slow you might be, I told myself. Don’t stop.

And of course, within the first three minutes, one of my shoelaces came undone. And I had to stop.

I find it difficult sometimes to restart when I pause. Picking that momentum and energy back up can feel like picking up Thor’s hammer. And I certainly do not show up to each day, feeling worthy. Most days, I’m just trying to find my water bottle.

But stopping is inevitable, whether because I had to or because I gave in to my desire for some sweet, sweet rest. But stopping isn’t the end of the world. Stop, and then keep going.

Sometimes that’s all there is.

Don’t stop.

—

Running outdoors again, I felt dialled in with everything surrounding me. That outdoor run turned out to be my longest distance in the last 3 months. During which, I…

• Covered 12.9 km

• Listened to 2.5 albums

• Stomped in 3 puddles

• Nodded at 5 pedestrians

• Watched 7 ducks have a family intervention

• Rolled my eyes at 2 Cybertrucks

I might be exaggerating here, but I felt so present, it was as if I was encountering music, muddy bodies of water, fellow homo sapiens, waterfowls, and clunky metal boxes on wheels for the first time.

Anyways, we now have snow on the ground again.

Let’s see how long it’ll take before I can hit the trails again. Canada, am I right?

And I’m not mad about it.

This was the first price hike I’ve gotten from 1Password, a service I have pretty much zero complaints about in the 7 years I’ve been a customer. Meanwhile, every other tech I paid for have increased their prices without batting an eye and just expect us to eat it each time.

The email from 1Password prompted me to log into my account on the web. And I made two discoveries:

1. That I’d been a customer for 7 years.

2. That my late mom was still a member of my family account. Kinda.

The thing is, I still haven’t had the heart to “delete” my mom’s user seat, nearly 5 years after I “suspended” it.

I still vaguely remember clicking on the “suspend” button back then.

Truly, I can’t even call this a real “user pain.” Compared to everything else that was making me despise being alive and awake, it was certainly nothing at all. It was more like an awkwardness that had just a touch of blue. A minor ache that was barely noticeable.

I remember thinking, I’m suspending my mom? How odd.

The thing is, even minor aches add up.

Hey 1Password, please consider an “archive” option. Because little bits of thoughtfulness add up, too. Even if it is just a frontend label with absolutely zero differences in functionality vs. “suspend”, language absolutely matters.

Maybe I’ll talk about the first time I deleted Instagram some other time, but let’s stay in the present. Here. Now.

Stay with me.

—

Sometimes, the world can feel like it is just too much, man. Shit’s fucked, and nothing is fair. Countless and endless little things (and a handful of monumental ones) pile up and drop on your shoulders like hail, pummelling your will and wearing your patience.

It feels like the universe is out to get you. And it feels targeted. Personal.

Relaxation feels like an impossible, privileged skill to learn. And you don’t have time for that. So, bit by bit, day by day, the tension gets stored in the corners of your body.

For me, I feel that tension the most in my shoulders, neck, and jaw.

Oh, and my dopamine receptors.

—

When I’d reach for my phone and tap on the Instagram app icon, I’d feel a visceral physical reaction.

It’s a sensation not too dissimilar from being incredibly full, at a mediocre all-you-can-eat buffet. You know the one, with the lukewarm spring rolls and the cliche interior decor and the sticky floor. Where you’re physically stuffed but compulsively and perpetually hungry for something more.

Something new.

Something else.

Something that is missing in you.

Something fundamental.

—

Social media is built on that something. And we all know what it is, whether we admit it or not.

I have yet to find another feeling that is even remotely close to the feeling of addiction. It pushes you away and reels you in at the same time. You’re so needy that you grasp at everything, afraid that if you don’t, you won’t be able to again. But everything is too much. Too big (we did it, America), too loud, too vivid, too instant, too high fidelity, too perfect. The too much-ness of it all overwhelms you, and you slip, for a split second.

In that split second, you stop thinking for yourself. You go on autopilot.

At first, it feels like a glitch. But soon, it becomes comfort. It’s a loop: the thumb swipes, the eyes glaze, the mind numbs. Looking at everyone else’s “ups” while feeling stuck in your “downs,” you feel the hunger in the pit of your stomach.

The hunger that doesn’t go away.

It’s not designed to. It’s designed to feel like both immensity and hollowness at the same time. An immensity that you can’t see the edges of, and a hollowness like a permanent ache.

—

My goal for my first snowboarding season was simple: get on a chairlift, get off at the top, and derive some enjoyment out of going down a full-sized hill.

Oh, and make it down in one piece.

I’m shocked to report that I achieved that a week ago.

—

But first, I had to fail.

I missed my first class for a work trip, and when I returned I stumbled around at the hill clumsily.

In those first two weeks of this chapter of my life called “mid-life crisis #5: attempting to snowboard for the first time in your life in your 30s”, everything sucked. It felt like a battle against something rigged to win against me: the snow, the wind, my own body, the world. I had hoped for at least a few moments of triumph and reprieve from the frustration of my constant falling and failing. But truly, I had none. The universe wanted me to learn patience and fortitude. I fell over and over, while tiny humans zipped by with effortless confidence, casually chatting about whatever tiny humans chat about these days.

In the bone-chilling wind and snow, on my hands and knees for the third time in a minute, I felt out of my elements, incompetent and humiliated. The only thing I could feel good about was that I always picked myself back up quickly. So that I can try again. And fail again.

My challenges were twofold.

First, despite logically knowing better, I kept staring at my feet. I didn’t trust my body to respond to the terrain, so I watched my board instead of where I was going.

Second, I was hyper-aware of my slow progress compared to the rest of my class. I couldn’t help but measure my struggles against their best runs, telling myself I just needed to put in twice the effort to “catch up.”

Staring at the immediate frustration with where I was, and where everyone else was, I fuelled my will to keep going with a familiar anxiety.

On the drive to the slopes last Saturday, I realized that neither staring at my feet nor thinking about “catching up” was effective. “They serve no purpose for me. I’m just sabotaging myself,” I explained my newfound insight to my partner.

“I know,” he said. Duh.

I had a new plan: Look up, hang loose, and most importantly, don’t look at what anyone else is doing.

Just me, working on me.

—

My partner is in a snowboarding class a few levels above mine, and his instructor had shown their group a technique called The Teapot. You extend one arm, and put the other behind you. Wherever you want to go, you dip that extended arm towards it, like performing a tea ceremony, pointing the teapot at a teacup.

When my partner shared this technique with me at the top of the bunny hill, a switch snapped on. I could almost hear the satisfying sound of something clicking into place.

The first time I tried The Teapot, I fell 5 times. Second time, I fell twice. By my third run down that bunny hill, I made it without falling. My partner watched me ride down, slightly chaotically but more or less in control, and asked me to take a leap of faith.

We went to the chairlift.

The last time I’d been on one was probably in 2014. As I dropped off the lift, slipping and falling almost immediately (for consistency), I found myself starting to ask: Can I really do this?

But I didn’t let myself think about the answer.

Less thinking, more doing.

Instead of outthinking the hill, I let the physical instincts I’d been clumsily building take over. When I go a little too fast, I fight the temptation to pull back, and I lean into it instead. It was a weird sort of surrender. Pouring into the motion rather than bracing against it.

I don’t want to paint an inaccurate picture here. To clarify, I’m no snowboarding prodigy. Believe me, I am still extremely clumsy. At some point I may have done an unintentional 360-degree spin, was airborne for a second, and then slammed into the snow like a sack of potatoes.

But even so, I surprised myself.

Truthfully, I didn’t expect the rhythm to find me so suddenly, like finding a light switch in total darkness. Or for the goal I’d set for the season to happen on a random Saturday afternoon. I was bracing for way more pure struggle before the first moment of joy.

And I did find joy.

My brain had been forced into a singular focus. When I reached the bottom, I realized my jaw wasn’t clenched.

For once, nothing else mattered. And the feeling of “nothing else matters” is such a bliss.

A rest we so rarely get.

I wasn’t hungry for something else.

Just me, working on me.

—

Since I deleted Instagram, I haven’t really thought about it much. I find that I actually do not care very much about how other people choose to live their lives. No, to be accurate, more like how other people portray the stories of their lives.

I know I only get to live my life, so I’m going to focus on that.

And enjoy the ride.

—

I had jotted down a few loose notes about my last birthday, meaning to expand on them in a Substack post or two.

My birthday was nearly three months ago now. I’m always behind on something. But I’m writing this anyway, since time is made up anyway.

—

Every year on my birthday, I power up the Nintendo Switch and open Animal Crossing.

I walk out of my digital house, shake the digital dust off my digital hair, and open my digital mailbox to find the one digital letter I know is waiting: a note from “Mom,” with a gift attached.

After reading it with tears in my eyes, I spend some time pulling digital weeds and talking with my fellow digital island friends.

If you ask me, I think this is simultaneously absurdly pathetic and stupidly sweet.

This fractal of bittersweetness continues to deliver the birthday wishes my mother can no longer send. It is just code and pixels, but it is also so much more.

So thank you, Nintendo.

Reasoning with it is a waste of time.

Wrestling with it is a waste of energy.

Denying it is a waste of heart.

Once a year, she’d send out a TL;DR of our little family’s little life, usually a few pages long. I don’t know how much anyone cared to receive them, read them, or respond to them. I do know she took the endeavour seriously. She’d spend days cross-referencing calendars, photos, pseudo-diaries (aka the backs of envelopes), and other sources I never bothered asking about.

Intentional or not, the letters doubled as invitations to reconnect. January and February would fill up with long email threads and even longer phone calls. My mom relished that they sparked conversations with long-time friends.

I read a handful of them in my elder teenagehood and young adulthood, when she showed them to me, but there was no way for me to hit “subscribe.” Who received her annual letters was entirely her decision, and I never made the cut.

Until the year she got sick.

The one and only year I was on her subscriber list.

She wrote “2009” in the subject line instead of 2019. She had brain cancer and had just finished treatment. She may have been confused.

In the letter, she wrote about the changes that year, made a few typos, and prayed that we would “seek God’s wisdom.”

I remember rolling my eyes and crying within moments of each other.

My mom never wrote another annual letter.

I suppose this is, at least in part, loosely inspired by that.

—

In 2024, I gave myself a free license to go on one “side quest” a month. Well, not a free license. I actually gave myself a budget. I let myself try whatever I wanted throughout the year: things I’d always been curious about, or return to things I’d once enjoyed.

At the start of 2025, I wrote a reflection post, ending on a note about what I wanted to pivot toward this year.

More focus, I said.

I want to ”invest my energy into fewer, deeper, and more meaningful things”, I said.

Well, here we are, at the end of 2025.

Did I win?

Let’s take a look.

—

Highlights and Lowlights

My friends have all heard me ask this question when we catch up (to the point of annoyance, I’m absolutely sure):

What were some highlights, and at least one lowlight, since we last talked?

As someone who values efficiency, I like that this question gets the person across from me to skip the small talk and catch me up on what they’ve been up to in the last [insert duration].

Get to the point already! (Lovingly.)

But actually, what I truly love is that this question explicitly invites both. The positives and the negatives. Both are accepted. I wanna hear both. Not just the polished, Instagram highlight reel. Give me what’s real, whatever real looks like.

So, here are mine this year.

If you’re reading this, you’re welcome. We no longer need to catch up.

(No, please, let’s catch up. I want to hear yours.)

Highlights

• I leaned into my fitness era more this year: getting on a snowboard for the first time, running my first 5k and 10k races, trying spin, more swimming, and completing a 100-day squats challenge, which is exactly as thrilling as it sounds.

  

• I felt more connected to friends than ever before in my adult life, through walks, whitewater rafting, bowling, karaoke, spa days, silly games, concerts, Halloween drag, what I lovingly dubbed The Great Friendship Tour™️ of 2025, and quiet conversations during difficult moments. Maybe I spent more time with friends. Or maybe I just put my phone down more.

• A friend somehow convinced me to livestream product building—a sentence that still feels strange to type. We started Product like it’s Friday back in April, and have semi-consistently shown up Friday after Friday. We’ve finished two projects and are onto the third.

• After nearly three years, I changed jobs in May. I took 17 days off between roles—longer than all my previous in-between breaks combined—and did whatever the fuck I wanted. I’m enjoying a rare season of growth without burnout. I’m also learning not to overthink the past or future.

• I visited New York City for the first time in June for work and was immediately charmed by its rhythm. My favourite places were the parks. On my second visit In August with my partner and friends, we had fun being tourists: exploring Brooklyn, checking out the city from the Empire State Building, shopping for enamel pins, and eating good food. I wanted to go to a jazz bar on both visits but was too tired both times. Next time.

  

• Concerts, concerts concerts! When I was younger I frequently went to live gigs, and it’s been energizing to get back to that in recent years. Music was loud and cathartic, and what a joy it is to share these experiences with our newly formed little group.

  • Sum 41 in January: probably my favourite bigger Canadian band

  • Linkin Park in August: front-of-line pit tickets; Emily Armstrong was unforgettably magnetic

    

  • G-Dragon in August: my childhood celebrity crush, still the King of K-Pop

  • Falling in Reverse in September: Ronnie Radke is a popular monster, alright

  • grandson in December: absolutely loved the intimacy of a smaller venue and the raw emotion in the air

• I became a first-time aunt in December. My favourite sister has a baby now, and I still do a mental double-take sometimes because it’s just so wild to me. I’ll do my best to be a fun aunt. It’s been a privilege to see her grow already, and I look forward to the journey ahead.

  

• This year, my partner and I celebrated 8 years together with snowshoeing under the stars, a fall ATV tour, comedy nights, ramen dates, artisan workshops in the middle of nowhere, and…

• Our biggest and most expensive home renovation yet. After months of planning and noise, our master bathroom has completely transformed. It is now my “happy place,” and I’m grateful for my partner’s uncompromising persistence in pursuing our vision.

  

Lowlights

• It was worth it in the end, but the bathroom renovation nearly broke me while it was happening.

• In February, I stepped away from a creative writing group at my local library.

• I quit Duolingo, where I had been trying to learn French for nearly a year. I still haven’t posted my rant about Duolingo yet, but I might in the new year.

• I got braces in July, and yes, I hate it.

• We lost one of our guinea pigs, Pumpkin, during the season of Pumpkin. We have one little piggy left.

• Since November, we’ve been navigating some ongoing health issues in the family.

—

Mary, Wrapped (aka: the data I couldn’t resist)

To be honest, I’m a little tired of every tech company and their mother publishing a “Wrapped” at this time of year. But here I am, making my own.

The difference—at least what I tell myself—is that:

(1) I am in control of my own story, and

(2) I can aggregate across “domains” for a more holistic view of my year.

So, here, I’ve painstakingly curated some data from the calendars, spreadsheets, and myriad apps that somehow make up my life in 2025:

• I spent 30 days out of town, which was similar (-3.2%) to last year’s 31. But unlike last year—when I spent nearly 3 weeks solo traveling far from home—this year was made up of a series of small, local, and relationship-first trips.

• I wrote and published 14 posts on this Substack (including this one you’re reading), a +27.3% increase from last year’s 11, and infinitely more than 2023, when I wrote nothing at all.

• I finished 28 books, a steep -45.1% decrease from last year’s 51 books. In fact, this is the least I’ve read since 2020. I’d been reading 45-55 books a year. I also have 9 books I’ve been “currently reading” for… a very long time.

• I ran 719km over 77 hours, a +182.0% increase from last year’s 255km. I did my first two half-marathons (for funsies) in August and October.

• I connected with 138 new people on LinkedIn, an increase of +273.0% from last year’s 37. Make of that what you will. I wouldn’t look into it too much. I also wrote 22 posts, mostly during my break.

• Between Spotify and Apple Music, I listened to music for the equivalent of 33 days (47,911 minutes, to be exact), across 435 genres. My top artist is, of course, Linkin Park. I no longer use Spotify.

• I attended 8* ukulele classes, 28 swimming classes, and 19* coding classes. I’ll admit that I’m not the best instruction listener or absorber. This was a year of trying to learn hard(-ish) things.

• I donated 1,470 mL of blood. I donated blood for the first time in April, and when I returned in September and December I recruited my partner to donate too.

• Lastly, I placed 10 Amazon orders—the fewest I ever have. Apparently, restraint is learnable.

*My counts may be slightly off, since I’m going off my calendar and may not have attended all of them.

—

Lil’ pebbles (aka: small things I’m grateful for)

As an aging millennial, I think it’s such a wonderful thing to be able to experience little bits of meaning sprinkled across my boring little life.

Paying attention to them feels like a quiet form of focus. Like micro-meditations.

Here are some little gems pebbles (gems are too shiny) I’ve found joy in and am grateful for this year:

• Finding the best bubble tea I’ve had in Ottawa.

• Discovering pistachio cream, and yes, I’m obsessed and want it on everything.

• Being forced pushed by my partner to try mountain biking. And ugh, he was right, I did enjoy it.

• Moving my office out of the basement. My mental health has improved by at least 20%.

• Finding a Korean hairdresser operating out of her basement near me.

• Starting my iron-on patch collection.

• Sitting in my hammock. This will never get old.

• Cat sitting.

  

• Discovering Lebanese breakfast. Fatteh, in particular, is one of my favourites.

• Convincing my partner, my sister, and her partner to dress up as Teletubbies for Halloween. Surprisingly, no one resisted.

• Convincing my friends to write Halloween haikus. Again surprisingly, no one resisted.

• Having my friends from different “domains” meet each other, both on The Great Friendship Tour™️ of 2025, at my Halloween / birthday party, and elsewhere.

  

• Realizing that I no longer hate carrot juice or kombucha. A delightful sign of aging?

• Buying a pair of red cowboy boots I will absolutely wear everywhere in 2026. It just arrived this week.

• Having a dumb crush on a tiny Toronto-based alternative rock band that opened for grandson. My partner got me their first vinyl record for Christmas.

• Adding to an ongoing shared quote board with my partner of ridiculous things we say. I say a lot of weird-ass things in private—half of them NSFW (unintentionally, I swear!). Here are my favourites this year:

  • “You need to jog my memory harder.”

  • “I’m also a victim of myself.”

  • “I can’t be funny in public.”

—

My 2026 new year resolutions

At the start of this year, I wanted more focus, fewer things.

I don’t think I quite succeeded in that regard. But I think that’s okay. Everything I poured myself into meant something to me. Lower-case something. None of them were The Thing, but they all brought me little bits of joy, reflection, connection, and / or silliness.

So did I win? Yes, because I said so.

But if I must be resolute about something, I suppose here they are:

1. Care less about what I already don’t care about.

2. Fold my laundry within a day of it being dried. A bold goal, I know.

3. Keep doing things that scare me a little. Like snowboarding. And coding. And swimming. And being seen. And let’s see if anything else bubbles up.

Let’s see how I do next year.

Happy New Year! Until next time :)

I wish I could say it wasn’t personal, but it was.

In fact, I’ve wanted to for some time. My reasons are partly personal and selfish, and partly political. Its’ not so much political, as it is about value misalignment. About what it means to move with intentionality in this world.

—

Artists have been calling Spotify out for years: low royalty payments, questionable practices, and a business model that feels like feeding off of the very people who make music possible and the platform viable. Some artists have pulled their music, some have spoken out, and others have urged fans to cancel.

For years, I’d read the news and opinions. Enraged about it all. Didn’t do a thing about it, and continued to pay my monthly Spotify Family subscription.

Then recently I found out that Daniel Ek, Spotify’s CEO, led a billion-dollar investment into Helsing, a defence-tech startup developing AI systems for military applications. That was the moment it really hit me. To me, this felt deeply misaligned with what music is at its foundation.

Art, not war.

Art, as a way to reflect and connect, not as fuel for violence and conflict.

I thought about it for days, more enraged than ever.

—

And yet, if I’m being completely honest, even that wasn’t enough to drive change for me. Not right away, at least.

I’m not going to sit here and lie and claim to have taken actions based on my principles alone. Despite my own ideas about what I valued, my actions aren’t as noble, so it seems.

The trigger for change was my selfish, greedy desire for what I wanted my music service to do for me.

Music is a big deal for me because it’s one of my native languages. Maybe because I grew up with it. And maybe because I often lacked a deep sense of connection with the people around me, and music was a way for me to not feel so alone. And maybe what I want is not what most people want. And maybe Spotify wasn’t designed with me in mind.

What do I want when it comes to a music service provider? I don’t know. Well, I suppose I have some ideas:

Serendipity.

Weirdness.

New genres.

Smaller, fringe artists—more local ones, maybe.

But nooooooo, Mary can’t have that.

Despite my best efforts to proactively go off on musical tangents on Spotify, I got loops of the same tracks until I wanted to tear my hair out. To me, at least, whatever algorithm Spotify built had become a machine for brainrot. A hollow echo chamber, where everything is predictable and safe. Boring.

—

Over the last few months, I started floating the idea of leaving Spotify to my partner. I didn’t bring up the whole AI militant tech thing, and mostly just bitched and whined about my first-world problem of not having enough outliers in the music being served to me in a silver platter by a big company called Spotify founded and headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden.

Why does it keep shoving the same songs down my throat? Am I asking for too much? I wondered aloud.

Yeah, I know what you mean, my partner said.

He felt it too.

I felt less insane.

I remember us in the car, going somewhere mundane, when Spotify resurfaced that one song, again. It was a song we liked, too, which makes it more annoying. My partner skipped it with visible irritation.

I admitted aloud that I felt stuck.

Like a toxic ex that gaslights you, Spotify had me convinced it was the best I could do. Maybe the alternatives weren’t better.

Plus, there were five of us on a family plan. Canceling didn’t feel like a personal choice. It felt like ditching my family to fend for themselves.

Dramatic, I know.

But especially as an immigrant kid, I was conditioned to be as convenient as possible for other people. Why create friction when it’s not that bad? Why not just stay put?

—

Then came karaoke night. My sister was paying for a karaoke subscription service which we borrowed at times. She had recently ended the subscription because she wasn’t using it much anymore, but my partner and I wanted to throw karaoke parties every couple months. We didn’t want to pay for two music subscriptions; that’s ridiculous.

And then my partner told me that there was this one particular version (a specific live version) of this one particular song (Crawling) of this one particular band (Linkin Park) is not on Spotify but on Apple Music.

In that moment, because we’d talked about leaving Spotify a few times already, we were like, you know what, let’s give Apple Music a try.

My partner signed up for the one-month trial. But we didn’t immediately cancel our Spotify subscription.

Apple Music wasn’t perfect, but nothing is. The karaoke mode was pretty fun. The library was solid. I started discovering that the “switching costs” I’d built up in my head—playlists, habits, convenience—were less of a barrier than I had thought.

The stickiness was an illusion.

I transferred my playlists over, which was a minor inconvenience and I wasn’t able to transfer everything.

But life did not feel incomplete without Spotify.

Dramatic, I know.

—

And still, this isn’t a breakup post just to shit on Spotify.

Despite everything, I’m deeply grateful for what Spotify gave me.

Spotify carried me through sleepless, anxiety-fueled nights, and flat mornings of stare-at-the-white-ceiling dread. Through heartbreaks and losses, when music was the only thread that held me together.

Spotify gave me small bursts of joy when I felt numb, let me cry when I needed to let go, and let me feel seen when I felt like the only ghost amongst the living.

It provided the backdrop to late-night work marathons, celebrations big and small, road trips long and short, hanging out with friends, falling in love, falling out of love, hot pot parties, long runs, getting down and naughty, and my waxing and waning motivation.

It shaped entire seasons of my life.

Spotify gave me all of that, and I’m thankful.

—

As a product builder, I can admire the craft. I know how much thought and work that must have gone into the personalization, the stickiness, the way Spotify slipped into the fabric of my daily life.

But that value given to me is now being built on harm to others.

As a product consumer, I can’t turn a blind eye to that. I have to ask myself. Is a company that gives with one hand and takes with the other worth supporting, for my first-world comfort?

All of these big tech companies, they’re all the same. They convince you your life can’t function without them.

But girl, you can do whatever the fuck you want.

Call me naive, but even among all the cynicism I see today in the wake of the ridiculousness of the state of the world as of the year 2025 on Earth, I still have so much hope.

I believe that if we are capable of building tech powerful enough to rewire people’s brains for distraction, dependency, even addiction, then we can also build tech that rewire them for the opposite: empowerment, independence, genuine connections.

Anyway, I have to at least hope that’s the case.

It’s been real, Spotify, but it’s time to go.

—

If you are a designer, product manager, or researcher who happens to work at Spotify: I hope you enjoyed this detailed post-mortem of one individual churned user. I hope you can use this to advocate for what you believe to be right at Spotify. Actually, I don’t know if I do. I know that you know, that you’re likely to be dismissed and the idiots are just gonna run the show the way they always have. (Yes I wrote this sentence deliberately to be irritating.)

Anyway, take away with what you will from this. What do I know? I’m just an ex-loyal-user-turned-churned-user.

It had been maybe 30 minutes since my partner and I arrived at the hospital.

Despite the circumstances, we were both trying to work full-time hours at the time—neither of us confident and secure enough in each of our positions at work.

I was two months into a new gig at a little Y Combinator funded logistics tech company. The team was kind and humble and I was grateful to have received as much space as I needed, but like many startups, the pace was fast and the expectations were high.

My partner was three weeks into a new role after an eight-month break, at a mid-size, mid-pace company based out of Edmonton. His team was considerate and genuinely cared about each other, but still it was only the first few weeks.

For two weeks, our days followed the same formula: sleep, work, hospital, repeat.

That Sunday evening at the end of August, we arrived at the hospital and sent my dad home to rest. Passing the baton in a relay none of us had signed up for.

It was around 8pm, if I recall. A hot evening, with mango coloured clouds hanging low, laced with slivers of ripe grapefruit and a damp sprinkling of nostalgia.

We said hello.

I stood up. Sat down.

Stood up again. Sat down again.

My body couldn’t make up its mind which way gravity wanted me.

Each time I sat down, I sat to my partner’s left, the side closest to her bed. And each time, he wordlessly and perhaps instinctively took my hand and placed it on his lap.

After the initial restlessness, we settled into stillness. Maybe ten minutes pass.

Then I found myself standing up again. I took a few steps across the tiny hospital room to her bedside, and looked down at her sleeping face.

There’s something surreal about watching someone you love so deeply die in front of your eyes.

I knew that I had to be there, and that there was nowhere else I’d rather be. But it also felt painfully impossible to bear.

I stood there, staring at her eyelids, the closed doors that I desperately asked to open. Or even just crack. Even just by an inch.

My legs were concrete, heavy with a kind of terrifying awe.

I’m not ready.

I tried to memorize every wrinkle and sun spot in her face. I held her hand in mine: cold, limp, waxy. I closed my eyes and took a sharp breath.

The sharp smell of the hospital disinfectant and illness filled my lungs, but I didn’t care. I mustered up everything within me, to stay in the moment, even though my heart felt irreversibly broken and every part of me wanted to run away.

Then, an image surfaced. Out of nowhere, like a slide from memory: the ocean, coral, endless blue water.

I don’t know why that memory came to me, but it did. And I surrendered to it. I felt like a conduit for the universe to offer her one last thing.

I opened my eyes. And I told her a memory.

“Do you remember us going to Hainan Island, mom?” I spoke. A whisper, but with strange clarity.

“It was 4 years after we moved to Canada, I think. You and dad decided it was time we visit family back home for the first time. We visited family on both sides, and we travelled as a family of four. We went to Zhangjiajie, Phoenix City, Guilin, and then spent a week—or was it two?—in Hainan.

We had other family with us. Xiaomomo and Xiaofufu, and Chenchen. The seven of us crammed into that little bachelor condo unit and its tiny balcony. That condo with your name on it.

That was such a fun summer. It was the only vivid memory I have of all four of us travelling together.

Do you remember when the two of us went snorkelling?

Nobody else wanted to go. Maybe money was part of it. Probably, but I don’t know. I just thought they were too chicken to join us.

Us. You and me, mom.

We dived into the sea and the world became coral and endless blue, as if the ocean had borrowed the sky and forgotten to give it back.

I was brave because I was 15, and when you’re 15 you’re young and dumb and fearless.

You were brave too. You hadn’t done anything like that before either. To be brave as an adult is not easy.

You’ve always been brave.

I never asked you, mom… did you actually want to go snorkelling, or did you go so I wouldn’t be alone?”

I took a few more breaths, and watched her lips, parched and flaking. They hadn’t let her drink much water, not with the feeding tubes.

My question hung in the air, unanswered.

I closed my eyes. Counted my own breaths.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

Then I opened them, slowly turned around, and went back to my seat.

Again, I sat on my partner’s left. Again, he reached for my hand wordlessly.

The two of us sat in silence, listening to the rhythm of her breathing.

Staring at the foot of her bed, I lost all sense of time. Each time she took a breath, I held my own, waiting for her next. And when I heard her exhale, I released my own. Each breath was a sigh of fragile momentary relief.

The rhythm slowed.

Time stretched on like a thread pulled tight, then stayed still. Full of unreleased tension.

We didn’t speak. There was nothing left to say.

My thoughts looped in fragments:

Please let her feel peace.

Please let her feel my presence.

Please let her feel loved.

Please don’t let her suffer anymore.

And then, she was gone.

I felt it before I understood it.

A stillness. A shift. A soft wave. As though the tide had gone out of the room, leaving only sand and silence.

Not quite relief. Not quite peace, either. But something light. Like the soft glow of morning light through a window. Like her presence had lifted from the room, and the space had changed somehow.

My partner was the one that noticed that she had stopped breathing.

For months I felt oddly upset about that. I would’ve noticed if I was paying attention to her. Something that had crossed my mind growing up countless times a day.

The room felt less full.

But not exactly empty.

It was as if she had finally exhaled all the pain, all the regrets and love and shame and everything in between. All the stories she had carried.

I imagined her free, at last.

And maybe—just maybe—she heard the memory I shared with her in her final moments.

And maybe—just maybe—it gave her some comfort.

I don’t know why that memory came to me.

It came to me unannounced, vivid and whole. And I trusted it enough to speak it out loud.

I hadn’t thought about that memory in years, and still don’t understand its connection to anything else.

Maybe it wasn’t mine to understand.

Maybe it was something she needed to hear.

Or maybe it was something I needed to remember:

That she was brave.

That she chose to be by my side, when I ventured into the deep end.

And that now, I chose to be by her side.

Grief still catches me off guard sometimes. In dreams. In silence. In marketing emails. In rest. In the curve of my own face in the mirror.

But alongside the ache, there’s that moment. That memory. That light.

I hold on to that feeling. I still do. When the grief gets too heavy, I return to it.

It reminds me that I was there. That I stayed. That she wasn’t alone. That I loved her, not just in the easy moments, but in the hardest one. And that she loved me, fully and fiercely, through all my seasons.

In the end, it wasn’t about answers. It was about presence.

And maybe—just maybe—that was enough.

Every one of them a promise of wisdom encoded into a convenient listicle. Secrets that a younger person simply would not have unlocked yet, because reasons.

I’m always a skeptic, but admittedly, have been click-baited by a few of them in the earlier half of my 20s, in moments when I felt particularly lost. Yes, these articles typically target the lost and confused. Which is a lot of people.

I don’t remember a single thing from any of the ones I scanned through, but I’ve always wanted to write one myself*, because reasons.

Now that I’m in my 30s, I finally have the right qualifications—measured by arbitrary units of time since my birth—to unlock this oddly specific achievement.

So here goes, in no particular order, the 20 truths I wish I knew in my 20s:

1. Life is a series of inflection points, where your decisions—to one extent or another—impact what you move towards.

2. There are no right decisions.

3. Stay here. A million thoughts can’t change the past nor predict the future.

4. Age is truly just a number. But it’s a number that can be—all at once—an integer, a fraction, a percentage, a variable, and sometimes an outlier.

5. Listen to yourself. At least more than you listen to other people.

6. Time is precious. Waste it wisely. Or don’t, and accept the consequences.

7. Sit with it. Whatever it is. Or don’t, and accept the consequences.

8. Things are pretty fucked.

9. Everything is temporary.

10. Don’t: Trust people on the internet who proclaim to have things figured out, like women who write Substack posts titled “20 truths I wish I knew in my 20s”. She might only deliver on 50% of her promised wisdom, because she wrote it as half a joke while lying around in her backyard hammock at 7pm on a Thursday, forgetting she was eating a popsicle, so it literally flopped onto her lap, causing her to swear at nobody in particular under her breath. And therefore she is not to be trusted.

    Do: Read #5 again.

If you’re in your 20s, you’re not gonna remember a single thing from this list.

And that is okay.

Many important things have to be experienced, not told through some words.

Experience the experience. Stay with it. Or don’t, and accept the consequences.

*When I said I’ve always wanted to write a listicle like this myself, it was… how can I put this nicely? It was a lie! The truth is that 5 minutes before writing this, I was deep in an IG doom scroll spiral and saw a carousel post that started with “I just turned 35. If you’re in your 20s, read this.” I didn’t read it (because I’m not in my 20s!) but I did swipe once and noticed that it was too verbose for my liking. Then I wrote this on a whim. No offence to that guy, though. I’m sure he’s a cool human being. Actually, I should thank him for leading me here eventually, to this footnote.

TL;DR — I have not defined a purpose. Just choices. Again and again. Toward joy, or comfort, or curiosity, or distraction, or connection.

—

For the first year or so, I withdrew from people. And life. I was acting as the unofficial executor. The logistics weren't too bad in the grand scheme of things, but deeply exhausting to me in the day-to-day: waiting on hold for hours during work hours to tell strangers at financial institutions that yes, my mom died, and no, I don’t know where her T4 slips are. Then I’d wrap up for some thrilling errands after work, like hunting for stamps at the closest Shoppers Drug Mart near me to mail her passport into the bureaucratic abyss.

At the time, it felt like no one around me really understood grief, no matter how well-meaning they were. I didn’t want to burden others with my pain, either. I read a lot about grief and mental health, because I was seeking validation for how I felt: I wanted to know that it was okay to feel completely not okay.

I also started questioning whether my work still felt meaningful, which led to me switching startup jobs, toward one with a mission closer to my heart. That brought some renewed purpose. Something to hold on to. For some time, at least. For that I’m grateful for, even if that job eventually became a source of stress and pain. But that’s a different story.

—

At some point, I started finding small pockets of “meaning”: habits, hobbies, even vain impulse purchases. I tried video games, books, miniature painting, gardening, cross-stitching, dying my hair, and probably spending too much money. When something sparked even the faintest flicker of joy—or comfort, or curiosity, or distraction—I intentionally tried to lean into it a little bit more. Because I now understand, so achingly, that everything is precious and fleeting.

To this day, I remind myself to appreciate the things I appreciate, while I still appreciate them.

Some of these sources of meaning stuck. Most didn’t. But I found new ones, sooner or later. More importantly, I had to learn, over and over, to trust that I would continue to find new ones. Even when I was deep in the pit and it didn’t feel that way. Especially then. It felt like doing a trust fall with myself. Every damn day. Exhilarating.

—

At first, I only looked for meaning in things that didn’t involve other people. Things that were more or less within my control. Relationships can never be (nor should be) controlled. And I wanted control. I wanted all the levers and toggles.

Writing was the one practice I somewhat kept up, and it became a lifeline. I think it was because it gave me a safe space to connect with myself. And also because it didn’t require me to put on pants.

Writing allowed me to show up even when I’m falling apart, and be okay with anything that showed up. The contradictions. The discomfort. The uncontrollable messiness of it all.

Writing led me to therapy. (Go to therapy, kids.)

Writing eased me into giving up control. I don’t enjoy giving up control, but I can’t enjoy everything that is good for me.

—

Slowly, I started reconnecting with friends. I ventured out of my pit like a bear after a long cold winter in isolation. Feverishly starved, but cautious. (I don’t actually know if that’s how bears feel in the spring. Just a guess. I could’ve looked it up. I didn’t. Look, it’s now 4am, and I’m not the Discovery Channel.)

My friends aren’t saints. Most of them didn’t know what the hell to do or say around me, but that was fine. If I wanted someone to say all the “right things”, I’d go to ChatGPT! The imperfect ways we show up for each other are what makes our human connections real and meaningful.

On days—or more likely, nights—when my feelings and thoughts overflowed and overwhelmed me and I couldn’t possibly fathom burdening anyone with them, I started to write about it on a quiet little Substack. This quiet little Substack.

I still have those nights. When everything that I feel and think feels too much. Too loud. Too abrasive. Too wobbly. I come back to this Substack at 3am (now 4am) on a week day, and write about it. Like tonight. Hello. Hi. How are you?

—

I think the thing about meaning is that it usually isn’t one thing, forever. It’s what you choose. And you don’t have to choose explicitly. And you can always choose again.

I am someone who often becomes paralyzed by having to choose. I suspect I’m not the only one. Choosing can be scary. But choose anyway.

More often than not, you simply can’t predict if something’s meaningful until after you’ve chosen to do it. You might have inklings or cost-benefit analyses. But it’s the doing that makes it real. So choose.

—

Right now, I find meaning in vain fitness goals, discovering new music and finding concerts I may or may not cry at, working on side projects where I feel curious and vaguely competent enough to not fidget endlessly, and spending time with people who I care about, to one extent or another.

Does this count? Is this enough to qualify as a meaningful and purposeful existence? I think so.

If I did none of those things but found comfort in reading YA fiction, hyper fixating on coffee beans, or taking inhumanely hot baths that scald away existential dread: Does that count? I think so, too.

Try something. See how it feels. Then try something else. That’s all we get to do here.

—

When a friend asked me this question, I told them I probably had three essays’ worth of thoughts.

This is, I guess, one of those essays.

Do I now have to come up with two more?

Frankly, we weren’t very close, and I didn’t even know the name of the loved one my friend had lost.

But my heart ached nevertheless, immediately.

I, too, have loved and lost someone as close as he has.

I texted back right away, then buried my face in my hands and sat in silence for a long time.

It’s been nearly four years since I lost my own mother.

In my grief, I’ve found comfort in movement. As if what can’t be expressed in words can be carried through the rhythm of the body:

In the soft earth beneath each step, as I put one foot in front of the other, running in the rain or under the sun.

In the sweet, gentle folding and unfolding of yoga.

In the repetitive, nearly boring resistance of banded kicks in my basement.

In the weight of piano keys, as I pour my ineffable feelings into them.

In pretty much any physical activity that lets me feel without performing, justifying, or explaining.

So when I was able to lift my face from my hands, I peeled myself away from my desk, walked to the front door, slipped on my Crocs, and went outside.

I needed to take a walk.

I wanted to find a body of moving water to listen to.

Alone.

I got a tattoo last year of a kintsugi teapot. It had been hard to put into words what it meant to me, but I think I’d like to try here:

The cracks between us—the unfinished conversations, the fumbling attempts to comfort, love, understand, connect, the discomfort of not knowing what to say—are not blemishes to be smoothed over, but beautiful seams that make us human. What makes our connections chaotic, strange, and wonderfully unique.

I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, but the truth is, I am endlessly grateful for heartache.

It is a privilege to have my heart broken in witness of someone else’s pain.

To care deeply. To feel my heartstrings tighten and ache in ways that remind me I’m still here:

Still capable of sitting with and holding space for both pain and love.

Still open to walking through the ever-shifting terrain of grief, and the multitude of discomforts it brings, uninvited.

Even in the rawest moments, there’s an unexpected kind of warmth. A tenderness that lives not in spite of the ache, but threaded through it.

I guess this is what it means to be chaotically, strangely, and wonderfully strung together in this world.

And I’m grateful for it all, however fleeting this moment may be.