The Case of the Missing Quarter

The last time I journaled was December 8, 2024, which was W49. It is now, as of writing, February 23, 2025, or what would’ve been a summary of W08. There are things I can’t write about publicly, but at the same time, it kinda feels like a waste of time to journal in Obsidian, reMarkable, analogue with pen and paper, or elsewhere if I can’t keep all my thoughts consolidated on one platform. Part of me is saying this is an ego thing to keep the journal public on GitHub/Hugo with the vain hopes that someone would actually care to read this in the future. Part of me says it’s too much work to reverse course and remove all public journal entries and convert it back to Obsidian as well, in spite of how much of a mess it is with the countless articles related to previous client projects, the endless tags of every noun, place, and title, with me addicted to blowing things up, resetting everything, and starting over again on a new platform. And a part of me recognizes that behavior as ultimately a huge fucking waste of time where I find myself passionately and throughly shopping for a new platform, notebook, or system… then spending a day long marathon figuring it out, testing it, and then religiously uploading, indexing, and categorizing previous content, just so I can have a smug feeling of false satisfaction that “now, this is the system I’m going to commit to”. I’ve done this way too many time in my life. Short of it is – it’s an avoidant activity that generates this sense of “epic new beginnings”, where the reboot, the restart, the reset feels rejuvenating, where the initial building gives a great rush of adrenaline. But in reality, it just takes away time, energy, bandwidth, resources, and presence from the real work. It’s a racket. That’s what it is, in the purest sense of Landmark Forum/Tracy Goss, it is a racket. This tremendous self-signalling, self-deceiving, con game (or marketing trick) you pull on yourself to make yourself feel better but not actually progress where you want to progress. The same high you get from buying new equipment/supplies, the same rush you get from attending conferences, the same deke of getting ready, getting prepped, getting hyped, getting in the mood, getting excited. So no. Despite a faint desire to even give any thought to a new system, or where to put these thoughts, I’m just going to stick it out here and carry on. The act of even journaling about the last three months feels like a waste of time to a degree. But I need to process as well. That, I know, is necessary. Because the last three months has been a lot.

The short of it: December was when the drop off began. I took on a project I shouldn’t have, it ate up all time outside work, it caused panic attacks as my milestone targets kept getting missed, I had constant anxiety, the January 1st deadline was real this time, and I ended up working weekends, holidays, including and up to 5PM on New Year’s Eve. And then January came rushing in where work, as always, wanted to set new goals, new directions, new strategies. Put another way, I didn’t really get an end-of-year break. So all through January, I am exhausted, trying to recover in spite of everyone feeling rejuvanated and hurried, and wanting to hustle to start the new year. On top of this, the dread, anxiety, and fears of the incoming administration, at complete disbelief at what’s happneing, only to have that disbelief shattered with worse things on a daily basis after January 20th. Then in early February, I am sent on an emergency business trip to the Philippines, of which, I can say very little. That was last week. My body clock has still not readjusted back to a natural rhythm. I would argue it hasn’t since December. January was also a month of waking up at 2 or 3AM because eldest was drowning in essays and exams, a final rush of them to give something to universities, his study room being the “room of requirements” behind my headboard, a room he has commandeered for over a year now. Heck, even today, I woke up at 230AM, alert and unable to sleep, so I went downstairs a read through a stack of comics. A stack. Then went back to bed at 8AM, waking up at 1PM. None of this makes sense anymore. And also, also, what’s especially frustrating is how the CBD/THC oil simply doesn’t work anymore. It no longer helps me sleep through the night. It’s my tolerance. I get it. I need to reset that. And I might as well.

So that’s the short of it. And as one can imagine, this left little to no time, energy, or bandwidth to write, or even try to write fiction. It truly is the case of an entire missing quarter. Twelve weeks. I guess this entry is an inquiry into whether what happened over the last quarter was worth it, when it comes to balancing work against creative pursuits. I think the short answer is a hesitant no. Hesistant because it was ultimately a net-negative result, but not weighed disproportionately negative to rage over. Some of it was necessary, some of it was not. I think the December project was a lived-experience of truly seeing the upper limits of my work capacity. It’s painfully clear – and pain is a great emotional setter to concretize experiences into values – that no, I cannot repeat that. Not only did I have to push so hard every weekend, holiday, and evening to drive it forward, it was also simply not a fulfilling project that moved anything forward (career-wise, emotionally, psychologically, etc.). And on top of that, it took a month to recover from, which was exacerbated by, as I noted above, eldest finger drumming, humming, and stress-groaning next room over, sometimes all-nighters, often until 3 or 4AM. It just utterly destroyed me energy wise. I am, also, despite saying it for two years now, recognizing how my age is affecting me. I turned 44 this year. I just don’t have the stamina like I used to. The stamina you can abuse as a twenty-something to work nonstop and recover fast. A month is a lot to pay for recovery.

Some highlights from this holiday. Inviting the RPG group to a Christmas Eve dinner. Did not know how it would go. First time we’ve had strangers in the house since moving in back in August of 2020, really. Ended up divided (white people in one room, asians in another, not much mingling at all), but I think everyone had a good time? Christmas with my father’s side, seeing all my cousins. This year, took the time to actually learn their names and professions and interests. I know, I know. I am not a good family member. I see them once a year, there are so many of them. 18 of them. I can’t keep track and never bothered to in my twenties and thirties. Most them are teenagers on the verge of post-secondary, or already working now. New Year’s Eve. Both girls had friends over. Eldest went out. Wife invited SIL and her family over. I was reviewing all my notes from comic book breakdowns, yawning desperately, wanting this to be the first year I not bother waiting to midnight and just sleep. I don’t think this will ever happen as long as I’m married to my wife and I’ve accepted this. I had zero resolutions because as always, they were made in October or November based on how the year went. A list of ten rules from The Big Sort and clarified in Anti-Goal Cycling. Very little of which has been implemented. I will give myself the fact that I am reading more short stories however.

In January, every weekend felt like it was taken up by catch-up and goal-setting with friends. But that’s not totally true. It was just back-to-back weekends where a lot happened. Week after my birthday, I had a happy hour meeting with Michael Tworek, a Harvard professor of Early Modern Europe. The period I would like to focus on for one of my historical fiction ideas. That was the pre-dinner meal where my fucking CIBC Bizline Visa stopped working and set me on the path to getting a new credit card for business. I have never once missed a payment and have been a dutiful, loyal user since 2008 and this is how they treat me? With needless financial checks, which my bank representative said was fixed, but wasn’t and ended up spending an entire day on hold with her own company to fix this. I just can’t deal with things that don’t “just work” anymore in my life. I thought reaching upper middle class meant pointless privilege and bypassing bureacratic bullshit. But no. Which reminds me of how I wanted to bookend this entry with the Fridgidaire Induction range we bought in December, was defective, required a repairperson to come by, required parts to arrive, and after multiple angry emails, finally received a replacement, only to be sent on my mission to Manila, and pushed back a week, which finally arrived this past Wednesday, and upon touching the touchscreen and seeing it work the way it was supposed to work, felt so fucking gaslit by the appliance store. Just agree with me it’s defective and say you’ll fix it. That’s all I needed to hear. But no, gave me half-hearted responses like just turn down the sound, and wait. No. Again. I didn’t work this hard to climb the stupid capitalist ladder to get things that don’t just “work out of the box”. Side note, bought AirPods (I know, I know, rare minerals mined by Congolese children) right before my trip out to Manila, and they just fucking worked out of the box. I don’t think it’s too much to ask for this, is it? OMG check your fucking privilege. Anyway. Literary opportunity missed. DId not start (and end) this journal with the induction range subplot. The theme of things not working out of the box (my multiple failed starts at fiction), and finally getting a range that “just works” and all controls, touchscreens, and knobs work the way they’re supposed to (where I hope to be this year). But this journal is a first-draft-and-leave-it stream of consciousness and I don’t care enough to make it “good” nor revise, nor version, nor iterate multiple drafts. That’s not what this is for.

Back to January. So after my pre-supper conversation with Tworek, which is such a wonderful reminder of what I miss about academia. Just intellectual conversation about interesting things, and not constantly talking in circles about “useful things”. I rushed out to Broadway and Nanaimo for my belated birthday dinner with my brother and parents. They still have absolutely zero idea what I do and how I make money and only that I work too hard. I wonder if my children will enter a profession I don’t understand. I doubt that. But I wonder. Day after, TTRPG with Ogrebeef, brother and Glausers. The series finale to a three year campaign of HtR5e. Characters died. Plots denoumented. Others moved on. The next session was going to be a Fabula Ultima session at a board game cafe, but again. Manila. And then Beetlejuice: The Musical the Friday after. Chinese New Year dinner the Monday after. Dinner with BC/DM at a Persian restaurant the Friday after. And then, dinner with ex-colleagues from eBay days Saturday after. So yeah. January weekends were packed. Which didn’t help with the recovery from the December project. Oh, and on my actual birthday. Was not planned well. Wanted ramen, but wait time was thirty minutes, so went to this Korean-Italian fusion place (ikr?), and had a mushroom pasta. I remember a cat on couch screensaver while they played jazz. And afterwards, we went to the mall to look for new phone plans because we were annoyed with Bell’s shitty reception in our neighborhood, only to find out from my brother, who works in telecomm that they simply piggybacked off Telus. The day after we committed to a new family plan (everyone has unlimited data now), the week after, I got their credit card, activating it while outside a comic book shop that was closing near Metropolis, shortly after shipping out another war game I opened and never played. There was a lot of selling of board games between December and January as well. My brother got me a fancy rollerball pen from Caran d’Ache, which I’m finding “fine” isn’t a size I particularly like as I’ve been using Muji and Uniball 0.05s the last several years, so I need to find a suitable, compatible extra-fine refill. Don’t know if they make a European standard rollerball for that. But yeah, it’s smooth as fuck on paper. Keep wanting to go to Charals, but never seem to be timely. I mean, I could just buy refills on the Internet, but I also want to talk to someone in person for some reason with this pen. I don’t know why.

RANDOM RECALL: Just remembered that during my December project, one of my procrastination activities was archiving all my iMessages history into PDFs and deleting them from my phone/iCloud so I could have space to synchronize my messages. That was a such an absurd amount of wasted time.

Going to have to jump back to December and talk about one of my greatest financial losses and business failures in my life as well. As I write this, we are in the process of shutting down the mental health facility we have in St. Louis. It was something I knew we had to do after the election results came in. The repulsive, evil side of that party is targeted cruelty to make a point. And given all the appointees that, once announced to utmost horror and now confirmed with further horror tells you exactly what this administration intends to do. So given that we spent three years fighting the insurance network, hundreds of hours begging to get money that’s owed us, getting licensed, fighting so hard just to fucking help people, and building something that operationally was sound, but bled dry with denials, delays, and outright lies, we simply have to shut down. I still have bubbling rage over all this. I keep asking if I was fucked over. Not just with the American health insurance companies, but other key stakeholders in the business. Should I stop trying to do good and right things is another question I keep asking myself in this economic/political timeline, along with the life stage I’m in, mid-forties, children almost adults, needing to take care of my own. Do I just pull up the fucking ladder and stop trying? Do I not bother with doing something that’s right for the world? Do I just stop, close ranks, and be selfish? Those are the questions whirling about my head. Hopeless anxiety is what their chaos desires. To freeze and do nothing. So no, I will not, but I need to find a way to do what I gotta do without hurting the ones in my care to protect either. I just can’t understand a country so set on self-destruction. So mindlessly cruel to its own citizens. And at the same time, a populace so easily deluded to vote against their own interests. So yeah. There’s that. I now have a huge chunk of debt shared with my partners. That’s on top of the monthly investments I’ve made over the last three years. Which on top of which, meant I didn’t invest in my own retirement at all.

And so, finally, we come to Manila. The business trip I was tasked to go on a Saturday morning while folding laundry, on a direct flight on Sunday at 1045PM, adrenaline pumping non-stop the moment I got the message, frantically searching for vaccinations on a Saturday, failing to get anything booked, and finally in talking to a pharmacist find out that even had I gotten one it would’ve been useless as it takes two weeks to kick in and activate. So no to vaccines. Then worried about my overly sensitive stomach, the last time I was in Hong Kong in 2012, pretty sure it was the fruit I ate, so I didn’t drink any cold water, eat any raw vegetables or fruit the entire week and still had a time of it in the hotel washroom. But of course, all of that, all of that was overshadowed by the mission at hand, which I can’t share publicly nor would I ever want shared in any textual manner. It was simply surreal, bizarre, and wild. And for me to fly last minute and parachute in (figuratively, obviously) and be a presence, to create safety, to be a leader. My heart did not leave my throat until the second day there. Thankfully, I was offered business class for the fifteen hour flight there, in which I got to lie on my back on a plane for the first time in my life and it felt luxorious, but also realizing I could never really afford to do this with my family because it was 5.5X higher than economy. That is a lot of dough. Maybe my wife and I could splurge in some future when it’s just the two of us. And then landed into the humid 25, 30 degree weather. Everyone speaks English, some more broken than others, and some app, so many apps. Grab, Hilton, PH Travel or something. The Grab to the hotel, first time experiencing SEA traffic, motorbikes, scooters, jeepneys all around you, all driving in this flow, all the road signs, pavement markers, and traffic lights are guidelines or decoration. Nobody pays any attention to them. You make turns and hope the oncoming traffic slows down. You honk and you change langes, then cut them off. You slow down to a crawl when traffic gets too busy and everyone’s inching forward, playing chicken with each other. Are they deferring or taunting or hesitating? Who knows. Later, I find out some people holding on to the motorcyclists are not friends, nor family, nor lovers. They are Grab passengers. You can call for a motorcycle as your Grab in the Philippines. The times I looked up from my phone on the rides to the office, I am stricken by the immense poverty. The lean tos, the corrugated metal roofs, walls, the stray dogs and cats, the amount of people just walking, getting their stalls or shops ready at two or three in the morning. The constant pulsing beat of life, of survival, of struggle. I ate adobo, pancit, and okra and fried eggplant (pritong talong) everyday. Tried sigarilyas, a starshaped vegetable you put in salad, daing na bangus (milkfish). Learned that the Philippines has the most endemic plant and animal life on the planet. Learned that word too. Endemic. Meaning it could only be found in that one specific region and nowhere else. Biodiversity to the extreme.

On the one day I had off, I walked across the skyway between the Hilton and Newport Mall, and watched Captain America and Bridget Jones, the former was utterly dull and why the fuck would they put the ending in the trailer and keep pointing out look, Harrison Ford is the Red Hulk? But even then, everything felt forced. The dialogue, the banter, the plot points. The latter, however, was delightfully sad, a grief journey, lost identity in your mid-forties, unsure of yourself, raising children by yourself. Chiwetel Ejiofor was a great addition to the franchise. White Lotus Essex gay boy toy, I don’t want to look up his name, was also great to watch.

I didn’t sleep for more than three, four hours at a time while I was there. Factor one was being sixteen hours ahead. Factor two was working the graves shift. That’s one way to really confuse the fuck out of your circadian rhythms. What is day? What is night? What is time? It’s all timey-wimey wibbly-wobbly anyway. Last day, the only streaming service that didn’t care I was not home in Canada was AppleTV. Crave? no. Disney? no. Netflix? no. Prime? no. You’re not allowed! So watched Wolfs and Argylle. Watched Fall Guy and Civil War on the plane ride home and also slept a full eight hours. It’s been a week and my body clock is still wonked out. Just got an email from Cat Rambo that I’m in for the advanced short story class. Let’s get back to routine and in rhythm, you dumb, aging meatbag full of water I have to live in.