I’m not a huge fan of Peter McKinnon and his hyper-polished hipster EDC snowmobile ATV drone renovation videos. But on occasion he strikes a chord. Witness I did this for 30 days and it changed my life, the mother of all clickbaity titles, but with a simple message:

Make a handwritten list of 8 critical things you need to accomplish at the start of every day. Then do them, crossing off as you go.

Not an original idea—indeed John Grimsmo does most of the explaining—but kind of brilliant in its simplicity.

I am on day number one.

So far from the list I’ve taken a bunch of stuff to the thrift shop, scraped some long-standing gunk off the library floor, and taken a bag of cables to the office.

Item four on today’s list: charge my bicycle lights. I figured if I was going to do it, I might as well make it easier for the next time, so I conjured up a system.

Apparently smoke alarms, or at least my smoke alarm, aren’t recommended for use when the humidity is higher than 85%.

With the humidity at 100% outside, and a window fan drawing outside air into my bedroom, my smoke alarm went off just now: I presume this is why, as, fortunately, my house isn’t actually on fire.

I took myself out for supper last night at The Farmacy & Fermentary, Olivia being away for the night. It was beautiful and warm and sunny, so I sat outside on the patio facing Timothy’s and committed the scene to paper.

I was back out to Freetown yesterday for another horseback riding lesson with Jester the Horse and Jackie the Human. 

I was certain that I had forgotten absolutely everything that I’d learned at my first lesson, but dribs and drabs flowed back to me, so it wasn’t quite starting from scratch. At the very least I was considerably more comfortable.

The big new activity yesterday was taking Jester for a jog, which is essentially, as I understand it, more than a walk and less than a trot. From the feel of things up atop Jester, his kinesiology certainly changed, and from the feel of things a day later, whatever muscles I needed to prevent myself from falling off once Jester kicked things up a notch were well-exercised.

I’ll be back for more in a couple of weeks.

P.E.I. has new regulations for electric bicycles, reports the CBC.

I was involved in several consultations during the development of these regulations, and witnessed the care and consideration that Graham and his staff put into them.

It’s great to have clarity on this issue: ebikes aren’t for everyone, but for those for whom they will make a commute possible, or allow cycling later in life, or hauling heavier cargo, they are Godsend.

Niti Bhan writes about how she presents her work:

There are those who would nudge me to write about my work in a political manner, ideally, in their eyes, taking a strident and vocal approach of rebellious and seditious activism. This is perceived as the means to promote one’s work, rather than letting it speak for itself. An example is a course I took in the Spring related to the dissemination of doctoral research where the lecturer’s recommendations on how to position one’s work in social media were based on answering questions such as ‘what makes me angry?’ – it was clear the profitability of outrage had made its way to academia.

Here’s a pattern I’ve noticed in myself: some new thing happens, a thing outside of my lived experience. Rather than expanding to embrace this new thing, I go to ground, grit my teeth, and assume that my experience of this new thing is unique, never before experienced by anyone else ever, and that if I simply try really hard, I can self-reliantly figure out everything that needs to be figured out.

I did this in 2011 when Olivia was diagnosed with autism. I did this in 2014 when Catherine was diagnosed with incurable cancer. I did this in 2020 when Catherine died. And, most recently, this was my reaction when Olivia came out as a trans woman.

What I need to keep reminding myself, over and over and over, is that the way out of this pattern—because, let’s face it, it’s a harmful and self-defeating pattern that gets me nowhere—is to seek out peer support.

For years I rejected the idea of talking to other family members raising autistic children: I was convinced this would somehow be a denial of Olivia’s unique experience of autism, and my unique experience as her father. It was only when I got up the courage to attend a parent support group meeting organized by the Autism Society, a meeting where I looked into the tear-filled eyes of a father from Montague overwhelmed by his child’s meltdowns in exactly the same way I was, that I felt the enormous power of simply being in community with others living through the same experiences.

When Catherine died last year, I failed to apply this lesson, hunkered down, and remained dogged in my commitment to “powering through” grief. One Friday last May I received a call from Hospice PEI inviting me to a men’s grief support group. I naively told them that, no, I didn’t need help, and that everything was just fine. Fortunately, over the following weekend I came to my senses, called them back, and signed up. The eight weeks I spent in that group, plus the monthly grief support group drop-ins ever since, have played a large role in helping me keep my head above water, in helping me understand grief on a deeper level and, quite simply, in not feeling so absolutely alone.

When Olivia came out as a trans woman in May there was some evidence that I might have learned my lesson: I reached out to Peers Alliance looking for family support resources. Which they sent. And which I then let languish in my email inbox. “Everything’s fine,” I told myself, “I’ve got this.”

It wasn’t until a conversation with another parent of a trans young adult who spoke glowingly of the power of a peer support group for the parents of trans children, that I found my way to Transforming Family, a Los Angeles-based support group for “children, adolescents and their families to explore issues of gender identity.” I filled out an intake form yesterday, got a phone call a few hours later, and last night I attended my first meeting, on Zoom, of “Parents of Transgender and Non-binary Adults.” I’m so happy I did: again, the power of sharing space–safe, informed, positive space–with others in my situation, was helpful on many levels.

What I need to remember time and time again–which is why I’m writing this down–is that while peer support can help answer questions, get pointers to resources, avert possible crises, its true power lies simply in admitting to myself I don’t have to take this on myself.

Seeking support doesn’t mean I’m a bad person, it doesn’t mean I’m not autism-positive, or trans-positive, or grief-positive. It simply means I’m a human being, willing to admit my limitations, and willing to admit that I can become a better person with the help of others.

A few weeks ago, at the Partners in Print “shop talk” Zoom, someone mentioned the book Orbiting the Giant Hairball by Gordon MacKenzie. How could I not seek out a copy of a book with a title like that, subtitled “a corporate fool’s guide to surviving with grace”?

Although it wasn’t in the collection of the Public Library Service, an interlibrary loan brought it down the street from Robertson Library at the University of PEI (perhaps the most bureaucratic journey a book has ever taken to move 3 km down the street).

The book is fantastic, and I was in, hook, line, and sinker, by the time I got to page 33:

Orbiting is responsible creativity: vigorously exploring and operating beyond the Hairball of the corporate mind set, beyond “accepted models, patterns, or standards” – all the while remaining connected to the spirit of the corporate mission.

To find Orbit around a corporate Hairball is to find a place of balance where you benefit from the physical, intellectual and philosophical resources of the organization without becoming entombed in the bureaucracy of the institution.

If you are interested (and it is not for everyone), you can achieve Orbit by finding the personal courage to be genuine and to take the best course of action to get the job done rather than following the pallid path of corporate appropriateness.

To be of optimum value to the corporate endeavor, you must invest enough individuality to counteract the pull of Corporate Gravity, but not so much that you escape that pull altogether. Just enough to stay out of the Hairball.

Through this measured assertion of your own uniqueness, it is possible to establish a dynamic relationship with the Hairball - to Orbit around the institutional mass. If you do this, you make an asset of the gravity in that it becomes a force that keeps you from flying out into the overwhelming nothingness of deep space.

But if you allow that same gravity to suck you into the bureaucratic Hairball, you will find yourself in a different kind of nothingness. The nothingness of a normalcy made stagnant by a compulsion to cling to past successes. The nothingness of the Hairball.

I have never read a better description for what I’ve strived for in life.

I always experience a mild sense of discomfort with interlibrary loans because of the bold, underlined DO NOT REMOVE THIS BAND. I’m left to feel as though I may accidentally commit a library crime.