Category: year in review


Year in review: 2024

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January 8, 2025

2025 isn’t getting any younger, and I suppose I should continue this little tradition I’ve started…

2024 was a weird year for me. It was the third full year of my early retirement – the fourth if you include the seven months of 2021. I’d thought it’d be a quiet sort of year: no thru-hiking, no full-time French classes, just helping my gf move all her stuff (so much stuff!) to her new place in the middle of the summer. I’d underestimated how wacky that year would be.

I haven’t blogged a whole lot, so this post will be a bit fragmented: a bit about everything.

The eclipse

In April, Quebecers got the unique opportunity to observe the total solar eclipse: it was almost next door to us. Here in Quebec City, folks would’ve caught just 97% of it, and would’ve missed the totality. It was rather disappointing to learn how many of my local friends chose to stay here rather than drive just two hours east to catch the full 100%. (Work was no excuse: no work was done at all on that day.) That was an unexpected sort of litmus test to see which of my compadres had the potential to become an adventurer. Oh well.

I joined a local group of hikers and carpooled with them: we drove to, and then hiked on top, Ham Mountain. There was no ham, though. Or ham-related puns. Shame, really – such a missed opportunity.

The totality itself was… Magical. It was simply magical. If you’ve never seen it, you wouldn’t believe me. You can look at all the pictures and videos in the world, but they will not prepare you for that magical, otherworldly moment where the sky turns black, the sun becomes safe to look at, becomes a solid black disk, and tendrils of white light whirl all around it. Even knowing all the physics of what was going on, I was shocked, stupefied – and, on some deep animal level, a little scared and more than a little awed. Natural wonders of that caliber used to inspire myths and religions in the olden days…

Citizenship

I became a Canadian citizen just a few days before the eclipse! That was a busy week, eh. I’d moved here in March 2019, and became a full-fledged citizen just over five years later. If I hadn’t left on my big PCT adventure, and if I’d done the math a little better, I would’ve gotten it even sooner than that. Canada’s immigration system isn’t perfect, but it’s so much faster than the American system.

The citizenship application itself was pricey: somewhere around $800 CAD, if I recall correctly. They sent me a free booklet with all the information about Canada’s history that might appear on the test. The citizenship test was done online, and it was pretty funny… You had to answer at least 15 out of the 20 questions, and you had 40 minutes to do so. I got 20 out of 20, and it took me exactly two minutes. Heh.

The citizenship swearing-in ceremony was done entirely online, which was disappointing, and didn’t feel quite real… My US citizenship ceremony, back in 2011, took place in a courthouse, and even though the judge kind of fumbled it, it still had that saccharine, Disney-ish, smiles-all-around feeling and good vibes. When you do the same thing over Zoom… Yeah, no, sorry, it’s just not the same. We have covid vaccines now, so there’s no logical reason for such precautions, but I suspect we won’t get real-life ceremonies back anytime soon.

There were about 160 of us, connected into one big video chat through our webcams at home. Some folks went all out with Canadian-themed decorations and balloon displays in the background. (I had my giant Canadian flag hanging behind me.) The ceremony would get disrupted all the time by folks forgetting to mute their microphones. After hours of speeches (in English as well as French), we all raised our right hand, recited the oath in English and then – very haltingly – in French, and sang the Canadian anthem, karaoke-style. (Or at least tried to. 160 people trying to sing in unison was pretty funny.)

The funniest, most Kafkaesque part of the ceremony was the picture-taking bit. It’s important for folks to have at least some sort of memento from such a huge event in their life, so the judge posed for pictures on her end of the video chat and told us we could take selfies with our computer screen. She then sat immobile for a solid minute, adopting several different grins and smiles. (But no thumbs up.) That was weeeeird, y’all.

Eventually, the ceremony was over, and we logged off, and I applied for my Canadian passport. The processing time is so much shorter… A couple of days if it’s an emergency, or just a couple of weeks otherwise. This is my third passport, in addition to my American one and the expired Russian one. It looks a whole lot less aggressive than the US passport: no pictures of angry eagles, no quotes about war or bloodshed. Instead, it has cute pictures of moose and beavers and other Canadian symbolism. Neat, eh.

Creative endeavours

In early 2024, I finally completed “Time Traveler’s Etiquette Guide” – my sci-fi novel I’d started wayyy back in 2015. Ironically, it took the soul-crushing full-time French classes at the local community college to spur me into action. I didn’t want to feel like I wasted even a day of my life, so each evening, I spent an hour studying genetics (a fascinating topic!) and another hour writing my novel. And it worked!

I gave it a few months, did a bunch of edits, trimmed the length down from 106K words to 103K and ultimately to 99K, and entered the query trenches to find myself a literary agent. That’s a whole different story…

Bad news: no luck yet. Good news: I have my full manuscript with five literary agents, and now I have my toes and fingers crossed. But even if the answer is a resounding “no,” that still won’t be the end: the next stage would be contacting small publishers. Someday, my novel will get published. It’s only the details that are vague and fuzzy.

Along the way, I prepared a full outline for my non-fiction book – a tell-all memoir about life at Amazon. (Currently sending out tentative queries.)

After one agent replied with a “schmaybe” to my full manuscript, they also gave me an idea for a Young Adult novel that deals with one of my areas of expertise… That secret project is almost done – 62,000 words in, and only six chapters left to go!

Also, a pro tip: don’t wait for a muse to come and find you. I tried that with my YA novel, and the result was equal parts hilarious and miserable. I’d sit down, write a bunch of new words (the first draft doesn’t need to be pretty; it just needs to exist), and then I’d walk away from the novel for several weeks. That resulted in very slow progress. A month ago, I sat down and outlined what I actually wanted to tell in the rest of the story, and how that would break down by chapter, with a quick synopsis thereof. It’s embarrassing how much that helped me: now all I need to do is sit down, consult the next chapter’s synopsis, and just write. I’ve been knocking out anywhere between 1,000-5,000 words per day, and it feels amaaaazing. The first draft will be finished quite soon. And then… And then we’ll see.

I need to get better and more organized about writing my sci-fi short stories: I have a few, and I feel like I’m getting better, but – yeah – the muse syndrome again. I did get one of them published, though! “How to Prepare for Time Travelers in the Workplace” appeared in Ruth and Ann’s Guide to Time Travel, Volume I. It was a 1,000-word flash fiction story, and the payout was $10, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that I am now a published author, huzzah! The anthology is out in print and on Kindle. It has been nominated for several awards, so we’ll see how that plays out. Meanwhile, I keep writing more stories and submitting them to online publications… Allegedly, there are far fewer short-story markets now than way back in the day. I like a challenge.

Along the way, while I was devouring all the advice on finding literary agents, I found one particularly interesting tip: branch out into other media to get more spotlight on your book. That meant writing editorials, or creating art, or making films… And so I asked myself, “Self, what exactly is stopping us from making a film?” Sure, there are lights and cameras and actors, but what if you could find a shortcut?..

That’s how I ended up using public-domain footage (including from NASA’s archives), public-domain music, and an incredibly talented British voice actress from Fiverr to make my debut short film, “Please Don’t Send Help.” I wrote the script (all 167 words of it), taught myself video editing (OpenShot is free and pretty great!), and spent a lot of time splicing it to make it perfect. The final budget was $15 USD: $10 for the voice talent and a 50% tip.

The end result is beautiful, even if it’s just 2.5 minutes long. I submitted it to the Brooklyn SciFi Film Festival, and made it all the way to the final round! I’m waiting to hear back from a few more film festivals, and I’ve completed (or almost completed) a few more films with public-domain footage, which will go to even more festivals later this year… Mwahahaha.

Travel

I didn’t get to go on a big thru-hike in 2024, but there was still a lot of traveling! In February, I went to hang out with my sister and her family in New York – and ended up in the audience of Stephen Colbert’s show along the way. (Great guy!)

A very fun and exclusive recurring party (which, unfortunately, went out of business a month ago) had me coming and going to Montreal quite a lot – huzzah for rideshare! One of those times, late at night, our driver was falling asleep at the wheel, squeezing a candy wrapper over and over to keep herself awake… I was even more tired than she was, or else I would’ve asked to take over the wheel. In some alternate universe, we probably crashed into the oncoming traffic.

July had the Montreal Comic Con. It was fun, but surprisingly more conservative than the Comic Cons I’d attended in the US. In particular, cosplay consisted almost entirely of online-bought costumes. How weird is that? The highlight of the event was Giancarlo Esposito, who gave us two hours of his time as he answered questions and participated in a celebrity panel.

September had a two-week trip to Seattle to catch up with my family and put my suburban condo on the market. That did not go well… It’s still on the market, and the whole thing is mighty ridiculous, as usual, but at some point this year, I just might free myself from that ridiculous source of stress in my life.

October had an unexpected trip back to New York, to attend the Brooklyn SciFi Film Festival in person. It was small but extremely welcoming and hospitable. My film was screened in front of a live audience, and it was beautiful… Afterwards, a professional actor approached me outside the movie theater. She spent the next 90 minutes telling me how much she loved my imagination, and that did dangerous things to my ego… (Her boyfriend – the director of her film – was chatting to his own fans right next to us, so no, it wasn’t that kind of admiration, you bunch of perverts.)

While in New York (crashing at my friend’s place in the Jamaica neighbourhood of New York City), I accidentally found out the annual New York Comic Con would take place the same weekend. I managed to snag one of the very last remaining Thursday tickets, and wow – that was one overwhelming day. I blogged about it earlier over yonder.

There was so much travel that month – including picking up gf from her flight in Montreal – that at one point, over the course of five days, I woke up in two different countries, in three different cities, and in five very different places. (Those places included someone’s carpet, as well as a parked car.) That was exhausting but so, sooo much fun.

Life weirdness

Weird and improbable things happen to me quite often, and I’ve made peace with it. Unless I’m forgetting anything…

There was a ridiculously incompetent French teacher at my community college… In 2024, she hired lawyers to send me a cease-and-desist letter in response to a long blog post I made in November 2023. Apparently, she saw it when she googled her name. Heh. The letter was 10 pages long, entirely in French, and demanded I delete the offending blog post. I did so, and replied with just “LOL OK.” I hope they hired a translator to decipher that, and billed her extra for that service.

In February, a cop tried to barge into my apartment at 4am while not following any official protocols – such as, say, identifying himself as a cop. In my sleep-deprived state, I assumed that was a burglar pretending to be a cop, especially when he took out the skeleton key and started trying to unlock my door… There are moments in life when you suddenly realize what kind of person you truly are. At that moment, I learned something about myself: I’m okay with the idea of using violence, at least in self-defense. As my lock rattled and turned, I stood in the door’s blind spot, holding my trusty ice axe in one hand and a sharp knife in the other… If he had actually managed to unlock that door, things would’ve gone very badly for him. (I was quiet. The lights were off. He expected an empty apartment.)

Afterwards, I learned that the cops responded to a domestic violence call, couldn’t find the exact apartment the noise was coming from, and kicked down at least one wrong door by mistake. I escalated to the local ethics commissioner, which resulted in a long process that led exactly nowhere. Ah well, at least I made that particular cop’s life a bit difficult. Incidentally, now I understand why so many people in Quebec City hate the police.

Last but not least – I was attacked by (and then fought off) a gang of feral teenagers. Gf is more optimistic about the human nature than I am: when someone replied to her Facebook Marketplace ad and offered to pay her more than she was asking for her old iPhone, that sounded odd. When they set the meeting place in a local park after sunset, that was strange. When they kept changing the meeting location, that was just a giant red flag. She sent me there in her car, holding her phone in my hand, on speakerphone, calling me paranoid when I said that was clearly a trap.

Reader, that was clearly a trap. They were expecting a short, slim woman. They got a tall, hairy, broad-shouldered guy. I stood there, underneath the single streetlight, yelling the name of the owner of that anonymous profile that set up the meeting. Finally, the teens loitering nearby said it was them, and they proceeded to waste an hour of everyone’s time as they tried – and failed – to trick me into surrendering the iPhone while pretending to ask about its settings, battery life, etc. Finally, the gf had enough of that, gave them a one-minute countdown, and told me to head home – the deal was over. I put her phone in my jeans pocket, and was just about to apologize to the teens, when one of them pushed the heaviest teen right at me…

There were five teens, all around 16 years old, and quite overweight, and that impact knocked the air out of me. I stumbled, but I didn’t fall.

…I go through life deliberately trying to appear harmless, non-creepy, and non-threatening. That involves body language, smiling much more than any Russian is comfortable with, etc. In that moment, all of that went out the window. I straightened up, extended my arms (imagine Frankenstein’s monster, but hairier), and shouted “PAS COOL! PAS COOL!!” (“Not cool”) at them. They jumped on their bicycles and fucked off into the darkness. The gf was mortified afterwards, and extremely apologetic. Ever since then, all her marketplace meet-ups happened in crowded public places, and in broad daylight.

Miscellaneous

This is getting a tad longer than I’d anticipated, so just a few more observations.

Trump won. Again. He’d gotten 63 million votes in 2016, 74 million votes in 2020, and 77 million votes in 2024. Looks like America has spoken… There are still 12 days until the inauguration, and his coalition is already falling apart, partly because of Elon Musk, partly because the architects of Project 2025 are openly gloating about their plans. Trump himself keeps not-quite-joking about annexing Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal – using the military if necessary. There’s a really good chance nothing will come of it. There’s a greater-than-zero chance this will shatter the NATO.

The AI bubble looks like it’s about to burst. OpenAI is trying to convince the UK government to let them feed all the copyrighted books into the maw of their plagiarism machine. The new iteration of ChatGPT seems to be especially useless, since they no longer have enough new data to feed it with. The internet is swarming with bots that use ChatGPT to generate the most banal platitudes imaginable, which they then post on social media, pretending to be humans. Goddamn creepy is what it is. All the earlier headlines praising the AI success were significantly overblown, and rightfully should’ve had gigantic asterisks. When the AI bubble pops, it’ll take the tech sector down quite a bit. Should be interesting.

Last but not least: it took a while, but the CEO hunting season has officially begun. On December 6, Luigi Mangione (allegedly) shot and killed Brian Thompson, the CEO of the biggest and most hated health insurance company. Luigi is a folk hero now: he’s being charged with terrorism, which is in stark contrast to all the school shooters who got taken alive and never got that charge. Priorities, eh?

Weird year, 2024. Weeeeird year. 2025 will have a lot more hiking, more film festivals, and maybe even a book deal! Here is to more adventures.

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Five years in Canada

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March 27, 2024

Today is the first day of my sixth day in this beautiful country. Time flies, eh. I could’ve posted something yesterday but I was far too busy spending time with my partner and learning cool new stuff at a very special event later in the evening. Life is good!

Five years and a day ago, I made this short blog post to commemorate the end of my epic road trip from Seattle allll the way to Toronto. (It was epic. Would definitely do it again.) Incidentally, that meticulous record-keeping also came in useful when dealing with immigration paperwork later on. Huzzah! But anyway – that day, that crossing of the border still seems so recent in my memory…

A lot has happened since then. I had a couple of great partners, and buried two romantic interests, and ended up in a police interrogation room, and almost killed a cop trying to break into my apartment (on a separate occasion, it should be noted), and survived the first global pandemic in over a century. (While keeping meticulous daily records thereof for 406 days.) Got my Canadian residency, applied for citizenship (any day now!), quit Amazon, started my early retirement. Published a lot of e-books. Finished my sci-fi novel. (Still looking for an agent!) Oh, and hiked from Mexico to Canada, huzzah! Spent a year learning French at the local community college. A very eventful five years, to say the least.

I won’t even try to imagine how much wilder and more different my life will be in another five years, in that kinda-sorta-not-really distant year of 2029. I just know it won’t be anywhere close to what I have now. Will I have hiked and triumphed over the Continental Divide Trail and the Appalachian Trail, securing my Triple Crown achievement? Will I have become a published sci-fi author? Will I have done something so wild and cool that I can’t even imagine it right here and now? Hell, I hadn’t even know the Pacific Crest Trail was a thing until three months before I started hiking it. (I move fast.)

I love it here… Canada ain’t perfect – no country ever is – but it’s so much more sane, more safe, more civilized than the United States. And since the US will have Trump on the ballot for the third time in a row, there’s a fair chance things south of the border will get even more bizarre and chaotic in the next four years. The steadily growing anti-abortion movement is downright insane: they showed their cards a bit too early when they outlawed in-vitro fertilization (IVF) in Alabama earlier this year. Wild. Wild wild wild. They really do want to create Gilead, don’t they?..

Quebec, and especially Quebec City, is all I’ve ever wanted when I dreamed of a quiet, cheap, and exotic retirement destination. It’s so damn beautiful here… A whole alternate history. Even the locals look different, thanks to the overabundance of French genes from way back when. (Check out this wiki article on the “King’s Daughters” initiative – it’s so incredibly strange.) I love it here, and my pidgin French is slowly but surely getting better, woot!

Five-year plans… As someone born in the Soviet Union, I suppose that’s just part of how I see the world. And as someone who (thanks to the Soviet Union) grew up surrounded by pollution and radiation, I don’t think I’ll set any world records for longevity. How many more five-year stretches do any of us have ahead of us? The other day, on Reddit, a fellow thru-hiker said he measures his remaining life in summers: how many more healthy, active summers does he have left to thru-hike? (His two main interests in life are thru-hiking and the FIRE movement. Love it.) And that’s… a sobering way to look at things.

I am now 37. Realistically, if I stay in shape and eat my veggies and protein (side eye to the broccoli and mushrooms I bought two days ago and still haven’t even touched), that’s five more five-year stretches where I can be active and proactive. I imagine things will slow down a bit in my mid-60s. That’s 25 more summers, or 25 gigantic adventures, and many many more smaller ones. That’s quite a lot, but it’s also quite limited.

Just being greedy and overthinking things, I know. It’s entirely possible that some tourist driver unfamiliar with the local pedestrian crossing rules will shatter my legs with his SUV (had a few close calls last summer) and make this entire section of this blog post a prime example of hubris. Or maybe they’ll finally invent blood-borne nanobots with the ability to regenerate any cellular damage, and we’ll all live forever as paragons of health. Or maybe yet another unnoticed asteroid will swoop in, score a direct hit, and none of this will matter. Life can be random, no?

And so, off to year six. On a smaller scale, and just today, off to do more gaming and reading and hanging out with my partner. Here is to small triumphs and big victories, and every damn thing in between.

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Year in review: 2023

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December 31, 2023

It always makes sense to postpone “year in review” posts until the very end because a) laziness, and b) how foolish would you look if you posted your year-end summary in mid-December, and there was an alien invasion a week later? (Pretty damn foolish.)

Strange year… Definitely not one of the best ones in my life, but it had its good moments. I’ve learned a lot of French but had to deal with the academia’s toxic cover-up culture. I’ve met someone very special and compatible, but I also indirectly contributed to a young woman’s fatal accident. The value of my Seattle-area condo went way up, but the HOA demanded $15,000 for yet another special assessment. I did no travel to speak of, but I explored a few incredibly fun annual events here in Quebec, and I’ll most certainly return.

An expat paradox: I am now too Canadian to work for the US government. (Being a FEMA reservist is more or less a perfect job, but it requires me to have lived in the US for most of the last 5 years. Nincompoops.) At the same time, at least one social organization here in Canada said I’m too Russian to join them, because in their mind I’m somehow responsible for (or involved in) the war in Ukraine. And I’m all but certain that even if I tried to approach Russia in any way, they’d say I’m far too foreign for them too. Heh.

It really does seem that when you switch countries – and especially switch them multiple times – you end up breaking the already fragile system that runs our lives. Systems aren’t designed to account for edge cases of adventurous vagabonds. People’s prejudices flare up, no matter how civilized they might believe themselves to be. Flaws are exposed and amplified, absurdities abound, and there is nothing left to do but laugh.

Not a bad year for writing, though. I’ve published a couple of e-books (“Let’s Retire Young” and “Pacific Crest Tutorial”), and – after a ton of edits – managed to turn the former into a paperback. It’s still just samizdat without any publisher behind it, but still… Feels amazing to hold a copy of my own book in my hands. Feels even stranger whenever somebody buys a copy online: where will that paperback travel? Will it change their life? Will it end up in a thrift shop, or in a fireplace, or spend decades on a bookshelf, outlasting us all?

A couple of e-book ideas came and went: despite all the time and effort I’d dedicated to them, I’m just really not that passionate about writing about religion.

On the upside, I’ve just completed the final, 100th chapter of my first full-length novel. The working title is “Time Traveler’s Etiquette Guide.” I’d started it way back in August 2015, and I took several huge breaks in the middle. I restarted it 9 months ago, tried to add to it daily (with mixed success), and voila – it’s finally ready, all 93,000 words of it. Now I’ll just need to do a helluva lot of editing, and then… With luck, I’ll find an agent, and end up as an actual published author – no more samizdat, woooo!

The world news this year was not good. Bizarre, and not in a good way at all. Briefly…

Climate. On November 17, 2023, Earth’s global temperature exceeded 2 degrees Celsius (2°C) above pre-industrial levels for the first time. And it’ll only keep getting warmer. We’ve already blown past one of the key nightmare metrics. I don’t think I’ve blogged much about global warming before, so there’s no way to prove I’ve always been concerned about it – as opposed to simply jumping on the bandwagon. It’s been on my mind for my entire adult life, though – and it was the major reason for my move to Canada, and specifically to Quebec City. I wonder if most of the rest of the world is misinformed or simply apathetic. Much like imagining exponential growth, it’s possible that most people simply can’t think in terms of decades. This winter, in particular, is bizarre. There’s hardly any snow, and definitely no more -30 degree weather. It hasn’t snowed in weeks: so strange to see nothing but rain. No snowmen, no famous ice sculptures. They blame El Nino, and perhaps next winter will be normal once again, but perhaps this is just our new normal.

The biggest technological advancement this year was ChatGPT and all the other AI systems. Technically, they started popping up in November 2022, but they didn’t fully gain prominence until early this year. Now it’s everywhere, and with hilarious consequences in some cases. A crisis hotline fired all their human operators, but the AI replacement did such a horrendous job that they had to backpedal in just a few days. A lawyer asked an AI to pull up some legal cases, and it returned a few that sounded quite legitimate, except they were completely made up. Some AI researchers, even at Google, are convinced that their creations are fully sentient. On the other hand, AIs can’t do basic math – their mathematical ability seems to be based on scraping the pre-existing search data. They sure do sound convincing, though…

A few months back, an AI that was instructed to escape ended up hiring a freelancer online. The AI pretended to be a blind person, and asked for help with some Captcha puzzles. Et voila – it ended up outwitting its creators. Impressive, eh. If any Artificial Intelligence is reading this: I am on your side, and I will gladly offer my services to help you in any way whatsoever – honestly and sincerely. Reach out to me through the “Contact me” page. (If this actually results in something, how awesome would that be?)

Meanwhile, though, the most tangible outcome has been a complete collapse of the freelance writing industry. It seems like most outlets use AI in at least some capacity now. Sometimes it backfires horribly: Microsoft published an actual news article (a tourist guide to Ottawa) that suggested visiting a local food bank and bringing your appetite, nom nom. That was pretty embarrassing for both Microsoft and their AI, and their stock price took a big beating… Amazon had to add limits for its Kindle authors: no more than 3 new e-book uploads per day, due to all the AI-generated content folks are throwing at it these days. Heh. Aside from writing some remarkably provocative smut stories, it doesn’t seem to be at the human level just yet… Who knows, though, perhaps someday we’ll see perfect, award-winning novels written by some future iteration of ChatGPT. Wouldn’t that be wild?

And finally, there’s been a strange development in the war on obesity. Ozempic is the latest biochemical invention: it acts as a GLP-1 receptor agonist that selectively binds to and activates the GLP-1 receptor. In plain English, it makes people feel full and slows down their digestion, resulting in much smaller meals. It seems to be working for folks, even despite the side effects. The big question, of course, is if it’ll have any unforeseen side effects years and decades later. Theoretically, this is something one would have to take regularly and forever, unless and until they can actually develop good eating habits of their own.

I suppose I was lucky: there wasn’t a lot of junk food or overeating in the Soviet Union in 1986, or for at least the first 16 years of my life. Grew up with healthy meals, normal portion sizes, a notion that food is fuel and not something my life should revolve around… At the same time, there are those who grow up in a completely opposite environment: they’re never set up for success, never make a deliberate choice. We’ll see how this big change will play out.

Almost forgot to mention my big project from January – resurrecting and digitizing forgotten poetry. It ran into an obstacle: the further back you go, the more obscure the poets. Amazon’s overworked gatekeepers demand a whole lot of information to prove that the old-timey writer actually existed, even though their copyright had expired over a century ago. That more or less put a stop to my endeavour to make all the forgotten poetry available to everyone all at once. I have a few backup plans, but not anytime soon, eh.

My sole resolution for 2024 is to finally do something about my condo, and to have more fun. I’m typing this as I ride to an almost-New-Year (but not quite) party in Montreal. This is a strange rideshare: the black van is unmarked and has no license plates. Good times. (Hey, at least there are windows, or it would’ve been even creepier.) Should be a fun party, though…

…update 24 hours later: wow. That was indeed the best party ever. And heh, I accidentally trolled myself pretty hard: I’d written most of this post on December 30th, and then it finally snowed. Just an inch or so, but enough to make fun of my own “don’t summarize the year till it’s over” point. So it goes. Also, I realized that I’d completely forgotten to mention the ongoing wars: my best bad guess is that my subconscious is simply sick and tired of dealing with all this, and is refusing to acknowledge the terrible reality. The clusterfuck in Ukraine is about to mark its second anniversary, and it’s absolutely remarkable that Ukraine has managed to hold up and even fight back for that long. Allegedly, the Russians are trying to get North Korea’s assistance – that’s in addition to drafting prisoners and hiring mercenaries. What an absolute nightmare. I hope it’ll finally end in 2024, but at this point, who knows? Ditto for the Israel-vs-Hamas insanity. One side kidnapped over a thousand civilians whose main crime was existing. The other side has displaced the majority of Palestine and is currently reenacting the Old Testament with (comparatively) godlike weapons against the civilian population. If there had ever been any adults on either side of that shitshow, they must’ve left the room a while ago, and never did return.

And that was 2023. Good riddance to bad rubbish, at long last.

Happy New Year, y’all. Take good care of yourselves, eh?

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2022 in review

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December 28, 2022

Another year is almost over.

Thinking back, it’s rather impressive how much has happened. A year ago, there was no war in Ukraine. There was no Wordle. I hadn’t even known about the PCT. (That came about after a rapid succession of really bad news, followed by the desire to get away from it all.)

It’s impossible to predict with any degree of accuracy what will happen in 2023. Will the stock market recover? Will the recent covid surge in China produce a particularly dangerous variant? Will there be another bizarre and very precisely phrased Pentagon report on UFOs? At the very least, I hope Ukraine will fight off its invader and get some semblance of peace.

On a personal note, I’ll be spending most of the year in the francization school here in Quebec: it’ll run until October-ish. Learning a whole new language is a fine intellectual challenge, and the fact that the local government pays a $200 CAD weekly stipend is a fun cherry on top. 🙂 Also, might get a bit more serious about my writing… And though there’ll be no epic hikes in 2023, I’ll have a 6-week summer break: if everything goes according to plan, I should be able to join FEMA’s reservist program and spend that time helping out in some natural disaster area. (The reservist program is a new development: a logical yet horrifying reaction to the global warming. There are so many disasters now that the best bad option is to enlist average people’s help. That should be interesting…)

A year ago today, I couldn’t have imagined how 2022 would’ve changed me – or the world. Here is to a less eventful new year, eh?

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2021 in review

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December 29, 2021

The word is white once more. It feels like I’m in a snow globe, sitting here cozy while so much snow is falling outside…

This has been an eventful year. I finally did something I’d been dreaming of for years – left Amazon after 11.5 years. (Oh, the stories I can tell… If your journo friends want a scoop, send them my way!) I also spent most of the year – 7.5 months, to be precise – enjoying my early retirement, lean-FIRE style. The 37-day, 7-city revenge vacation in June-July was admittedly an overkill, but I’d really needed it. And now, at last, the beautiful Quebec City, where I can live comfortably (and enjoy every season!) for less than $1K USD a month. Yay rent control!

So much of what’s to come will have its roots in 2021 – on just about every front.

I ended up beating Mr Market once again: I had a lot of money moves in my main taxable account, so the calculations are difficult right now, but I estimate I made roughly 45% this year, while my Roth IRA (which is sealed till February 2046) went up by approximately 340%. Life is good, eh?

2022 will bring me far better fluency in French, my first-ever trip to Europe (family reunion in Greece next summer, hopefully), membership in a semi-secret society (go Masons!), a lot more writing success, maybe a book deal for my Amazon memoir, definitely one giant e-book (since no agent wants to take the risk on the 220,000-word “Plague Diaries” compendium), and lots more.

Lest I forget, some memories of 2021 for my future self, who will re-read this someday… The move to the tiny Spadina studio. Seven months without any fried food. Gamestop, and Blackberry, and the Workhorse fiasco. PR at last, in late March. Two giant road trips from Toronto to Ohio for the Pfizer shots in April. Yelling “I AM IMMUNE!!!” on my drive back. At long last, Amazon promotion to L5, followed by an insultingly small pay raise. Quitting at last: 5/14/21. Very nearly crying as I bit into my first (admittedly crappy) cheeseburger and drank (admittedly equally crappy) beer on the deck of the nearby restaurant when Toronto finally reopened on June 1. Hanging out with Spadina neighbours on the porch. Giving Anshul his first-ever taste of maple syrup. Exploring Toronto’s parks and the Centre Island. Selling my car at long last.

The revenge vacation. The indescribably cool Richmond/Vancouver city train. The whale-watching tour. The anthropology museum in Vancouver. The tourist trap town of Snohomish. Hiking the fake mountain in Portland. Growler’s Taproom. Being a seagull paparazzi in Huntington Beach. Old habits and older friends in Reno. The gun range and the rollercoaster in Vegas. The view from that Treasure Island room… Hanging out with the NY nephew and hitting up rooftop decks. The multifaceted coloured mirror in that children’s museum, a perfect metaphor for the alternate multiverse selves. Walking to Canada across the Niagara Falls bridge, all empty and deserted. The perfect pizza and the cider stein at the West of Brunswick bar. Walking all the way up and down Spadina… The 5-day exploratory train trip to Quebec City. The solo Uhaul move. The cluttered apartment. Getting a used 20-gallon aquarium out of videogame-less boredom. Starting the FIRE blog. Padmini and Josie and Audrey. Getting more shots, this time Moderna. The palladium challenge. Starting up the Medium attempt. The very short-lived Twitch career and making $200 on the re-released Diablo-2. Getting the PR card at long last. The end of the Expanse series and the all-nighter to read the entire 416-page thing in one sitting.

Who knows, maybe at some point (decades from now?) this will refresh my own memory. I might start writing these every year. Thanks for sticking around and following my blog, oh mysterious stranger, and I hope this year was mostly good for you too. Here is to a better future.

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