Resolutions Revisited: 2020

Time to dust off this long-dormant page to continue my annual tradition of public self-evaluation, and to revisit the goals I set at the beginning of this year. Of course, these goals were written 2 months before the world changed irrevocably in a million different ways – but a post where I just write “HA!” after each aspiration that failed to anticipate a global pandemic seems cruel to my past self, and the things we all did to survive this year. So I will do my best to be kind and generous to my selves, past and present. This year, at least, we deserve it.

Looking Back

Hindsight truly being 20/20 (sorry), here is how I did this year:

10. Delete Facebook.

I did this! For the first 6 months of the year, I removed myself from Facebook and deleted the app from my phone. It had become unconscionable to continue to support the ad revenue of a company that, from where I am standing, poses one of the greatest threats to democracy (and society writ large) in the 21st century. Facebook has absolutely done more ill than good to global institutions, mental health, and data sovereignty, and it was a joy to leave it. No, I didn’t leave Instagram as well. Yes, I know that Facebook owns Instagram, and that if I truly wanted these lofty words to matter I would have had the gumption to do both. But addiction is hard, and withdrawal is real.

Of course, I also said that I left Facebook for the first 6 months of the year. Eventually, and begrudgingly, I had to rejoin in order to take on some social media responsibilities at work – but I am happy to report that I have since passed those on to others, and am once again off the blighted platform.

9. Eat less meat.

I won’t lie, I completely forgot that I had set this goal. That is to say nothing of its worthiness – I still feel strongly that I need to reduce my meat consumption for environmental reasons. But when the world turned upside down, and food scarcity and financial stability were suddenly on my radar in ways they had never been before, dietary goals simply became secondary. So I didn’t keep track. Colloquially, I think I likely did eat less meat this year than others. We had my vegetarian mother-in-law staying with us for the first months of the pandemic, so we ate meat-free meals a lot. But I cannot truthfully claim that I did it with this goal in mind.

8. Reduce phone screen time from 10% to less than 5%.

In retrospect, this seems laughably naïve. But again, we had no idea what was coming. But no, this did not happen. Suddenly, our phones and computers went from being screens we hid behind to avoid social interaction to being our only portal to social interaction. Who knows what the long-term effects of this year’s reliance on technology will be for mental and emotional well-being. But as I said, we did what we had to in order to survive.

7. Spend no money on books – read what I already own, or use the library.

I did this! This may be the one goal which I unequivocally and intentionally stuck to, all 12 months of this year. The only new books which entered my collection were gifts from other people. I read books from my own shelves that I have been meaning to get to for years. I renewed my library card, and used it often. True, I have not read as much this year as in years past. While I had an unexpected wealth of time, I also had a growing toddler who is far more interesting than anything I have ever read. And there are some books which it will be hard to continue not to buy – works by favourite authors, conclusions to series I own the rest of, that sort of thing – but I am certainly going to try to continue being more selective about buying books versus supporting one of the true miracles of organized society: the free public library.

6. No sugary drinks.

Yeah, I didn’t do this. I do try to order sugar-free soft drinks when I am getting takeout (boy, has this been the year for takeout); but I still put sugar in my coffee, I still order from Starbucks, I still drink cans of pop by the case. I shouldn’t, but I do. Maybe next year.

But probably not.

5. No video games Monday-Thursday.

This one is truly laughable. Video games played a huge role in keeping me sane this year, and I don’t apologize for it. In fact, video games have factored into many of the brightest memories I have of this blighted year. Early on in the pandemic, our family did what everyone was doing – connecting with people we could no longer see in person by playing Jackbox and House Party games virtually. In those first few months, Angela and I rediscovered the joy of playing couch co-op games, something we had not done in ages. While Ophelia napped, we chopped and served our way through Overcooked 1 and 2, whisper-yelling at each other so as not to wake the baby. Then, for Father’s Day, Angela surprised me with a Nintendo Switch (the generosity and awesomeness of which still astounds me), and every day since we have enjoyed the sweet escapism of Animal Crossing. Video games really and truly got us through this year. No regrets.

4. Go to the doctor.

I didn’t do this. Not because I didn’t want to – when the year began, I had absolutely every intention of following through on this one. But then it became inadvisable and a waste of resources for healthy people to visit the doctor, and so I put it on hold. Next October I turn 30. Hopefully by then the world will be sane enough that I can make good on this one. Who knows, maybe pigs will fly and I will go to the dentist too.

3. Finish a major writing project.

This one hurts a little bit. I don’t regret how I spent this year, as we shall see when we get to the bottom of this list. But I cannot help feeling, as I look back at the unexpected gift of time that I was given this year, that I must have done something wrong. Year after year, I add to the pile of writing projects I have begun but not finished. Novels, poetry chapbooks, short stories, blog posts. All sit in digital purgatory, waiting to be resumed. And I cannot imagine another year where I will have more time that I could, with self-discipline and determination, have spent writing.

In my head and in my heart, I am a writer. It is what I tell myself I would do if money was immaterial, if I didn’t have to keep a job to house and feed my family, if, if, if. But a writer writes. I, as evidenced by this blog alone, do not. Perhaps it is as simple as that.

2. Rid myself of gamification.

Hey, 2 out of 9 ain’t bad. Looking back at my post from last year on the many gamified apps and experiences I was plugged into, I have now excised all of them! I really feel that I have made progress shifting my brain from objective-based reward seeking to process-based enjoyment. It is an ongoing battle, but I do make a conscious effort to interrogate my motivations in reading a thing or buying a thing or doing a thing. Am I reading/buying/doing in order to score a dopemine dump from some ultimately meaningless system of badges and achievements and rewards? Or am I doing/buying/reading because I enjoy it? Will it fulfill me in some deeper way? Will it make me or my family happier? Ultimately, am I in control?

Of course, this blog may be the last remaining exception. I think I write it for me, but I will still check back 100 times in the next few days to see how many people have read it.

1. Prioritize family time.

This was going to be my hardest goal to accomplish, and yet it became the easiest. Nothing has been good about this year. Hundreds of thousands of people have died in a global pandemic, nationalism and racial violence have continue to become more mainstream, wealth disparity has grown wider, and RBG died. But in the midst of all that suffering, I received an incredible blessing. I got laid off. From April to June, I was off work – and because I live in Canada, my government made sure I received a benefit sufficient to cover my family’s needs. As a result, I got to be home every single day while my daughter grew from 8 to 10 months old. I got to see her learn to take steps, to babble and speak, to explore the world around her. I got time with my wife in as beautiful a spring as I can remember. I got to slow down for a while, to be present for moments I would otherwise have missed. So I didn’t write a book. I didn’t change the world. I didn’t do much of anything at all. I was exactly where I needed to be.

Looking Ahead

Having looked back, it is time to (foolishly, probably) set some goals for 2021. How does one set goals in a year like this, when the worst may yet be ahead? Just call me Don Quixote.

10. Get vaccinated.

9. Reply more promptly.

8. Walk every day.

7. Write another crossword.

6. Catch up on some zeitgeisty media.

5. Reduce the number of apps on my phone.

4. Create more.

3. Cook more.

2. For real this time, finish a major writing project.

1. Focus on mental health.

To my unborn child, with eager anticipation

To my unborn child, with eager anticipation;

I love you.

These many months waiting for you have been the best and most terrifying of our lives. Your mom and I shared tears of joy and disbelief when we found out you would be ours. Though we had hoped for you, longed for you, the thought that we would actually have the astonishing fortune of meeting you was beyond our comprehension. Soon, however, our first timid steps towards preparing ourselves for you became a strong, comfortable stride. As you have grown, we have grown. We have come to know you in some ineffable way – your patterns and moods, your shape and size – though you are still so much a mystery to us. At night, we dream of the person you will be, but we also know that these are but shadows; you will surpass every last one just by being you.

I have done everything I can to be ready to be your dad. I have read books and I have prayed, I have built furniture and painted walls and saved what I could for your future. I have watched and learned from my own father, the greatest man I know. I will always do my best to be the person you need me to be. But sometimes, dear one, I will fail. I will let you down. In your eyes I will be perfect, until I am not; and when that stained glass illusion of parental infallibility comes crashing down I promise I will show you that I love you in spite of my many faults. And I will always say I am sorry. If you don’t believe me, ask your mother.

Let me tell you about your mother. She is my light in the darkness, little one. She is everything that I could ever aspire to be. She is kind and boundlessly generous. She is passionate and devoted and steadfast and soft. She has more love in her soul than anyone I have ever met – though she loves you and I with all her heart, still she finds space and time to love everyone and everything who needs it of her. I have not met you yet, but I know that the best part of you will be that which comes from her. I am in awe of your mom. Perhaps one day you will have the awesome privilege of witnessing someone as strong as her carry a child within themselves for nine long months, nurturing them with their own force of life. Perhaps you will even do so yourself. But know forever that your mother withstood the world to bring you into it. She is mighty, and we are so lucky she belongs to us – to you and to me – and that we belong to her.

Speaking of belonging and belongings, we may not have the most nor the newest nor the finest of the things with which people fill their lives. We will not have the most money, nor the most stuff, but we will always have enough. And we will have the most fun, and the most joy, and the most love of anyone you will ever know – I promise you that. Our richness may never be in material things, but we are wealthy in love and in one another. We have all we need, we three. And if and when our family should continue to grow, we will have enough then too. Always.

We can’t wait to meet you, dearest one. We have prepared our hearts and our home for you. We have imagined all of the people you might be, and have no doubt come up short. We have picked names that we hope will fit you, this amazing person we have never met. But if we get it wrong, and the person you are inside does not match the name we have chosen for you, I hope we will show you with unconditional love that you can share those scary and precious truths of yourself with us. We can’t wait to discover by your side the person you are and the many people you will be.

You will have hopes and dreams, fears and sorrows; and we can’t wait to accomplish and celebrate them, overcome and defend you from them together. Hard as it may be for you to believe, your mom and I have hopes and dreams as well. Many of them we have realized together. Some we have not, and may never. Some we have put away in boxes in the back of a drawer to take out late at night and admire, like in the story book. But our deepest hope and truest dream has been you, and you are almost here. All we ever wanted to be was your mom and dad. Thank you for making our dreams come true.

And while we are on the business of dreams, here I must warn you. There will be forces, my darling, both outside of yourself and within, which aim to destroy your dreams. To belittle them. To prevent them from coming true. There are some who have questioned us, your mom and me, why we would want to bring a child into the world at times like these. They tell us there is too much sadness, too much anger, too much hatred in this world for a child. They tell us there will be no hope, no safety, no world for you to inherit. And that is to say nothing of the true villains inside each of us, who go by scary names like depression and anxiety and loneliness, who fight our dreams from the inside and tell us we can’t do it. And they will fight you too. They will make you feel as if someone has turned out all the lights and left you alone in the dark.

But baby, you have power within you to conquer them all. You are brilliant and wondrous and unstoppable. You have creativity and ingenuity and an infinite capacity for love. You have more potential than anyone who has ever lived. Every path to every possible future stretches before you, to choose as you will. You will know things that we never will, never could. You will teach us, each day, things that no one else knows. And most of all, precious and wild thing, you will never be alone. We will fight for you and beside you, all the days we walk this earth, to give you the chance to change the world in the ways you most certainly will. We will always be your light in the dark, as you will be ours.

I love you, baby. We love you.

Always.

Healthy Reading Checkup: Q2 2019

As the halfway mark of the year flies past, it is time once again to take stock of my reading habits. As I wrote in my Q1 round up, I am making a conscious effort this year to read in a way that expands my horizons, reduces stress, challenges me, and improves my mental health. My pace slowed a bit these past three months compared to the beginning of the year, and will no doubt slow again when Angela and I have a baby in a month; part of the challenge of developing more healthy reading habits for me is to steer away from judging myself based on volume read, and instead placing value on what I am reading and whose voices I am seeking.

So, what have I read this year so far? Why have I chosen the books I have? Are they helpful, healthy, diverse reading choices? What will I read next?

 

13. Beloved by Toni Morrison

Why?: This is another book that has been on my To Be Read list for ages, and I finally got around to it. It is a perennial contender for many arbitrary colloquial titles, including the “Great American Novel”, “Top 10 Works of Fiction”, and the like. It seems to be one of those books that everyone is supposed to read, and so I read it.

Health check: African American authors often have praise of their work delivered alongside the qualifier of their race. “Toni Morrison is one of the greatest black writers in the history of American literature” is something that has and will be written and expressed many times; however, no one would ever say that “John Steinbeck is one of the greatest white writers in the history of American literature”. For some reason we feel a need to qualify the greatness of writers of colour by their race. But Toni Morrison is not simply one of the greatest black writers in history. She is one of the greatest writers ever to work in the English language. She is one of the greatest writers in history. Period. That she is black, and tells stories of the black experience, is simply the lens through which her greatness is manifested. Her excellence and her drive to rise above those who would relegate her to a separate category based on the colour of her skin means that those stories have found an audience that may otherwise have remained ignorant. Her race is not a qualifier. It earns her no bonus points. She gets to be a part of the conversation around greatness because she writes the best books. And Beloved is no different. It was well worth the read.

 

14. 11/22/63 by Stephen King

Why?: I still have not read every Stephen King novel, despite having been a Constant Reader for more than 15 years. This one has been high on my priority list for a long time, based on friends’ recommendations and just how different the premise is from his usual dark fare. Plus, even in a year where I am trying to focus on diversity and reading widely, I cannot go a year without the King.

Health check: After a dense and difficult read like Beloved, it was nice to return to something intimately familiar. King’s work is so comforting, even when it is edge-of-your-seat suspenseful and exciting, as I found 11/22/63 to be. While this ends up being another point in the “old white guy” column, this book diversified my reading in other ways – primarily by branching into sub-genres of sci-fi and time travel that I generally don’t choose to read. And (much to my great relief), King absolutely nails his time travel rules and systems. Few things bother me more than poorly conceived time travel dynamics with cheesecloth logic and exploitable paradoxes. King’s is well-considered and tight, and allowed me to stay in this world for all 800+ pages.

 

15. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Why?: Somehow this masterpiece has largely escaped my notice. I have been aware of it for a long time, and that some people talk about its importance in the same way that I talk about Peter Pan. I found myself in a bookstore with an hour to kill before an event, and so I picked it up, found a chair, and read it cover-to-cover while I waited.

Health check: I am delighted to have finally read this excellent little book. I will need to find a copy and read it many more times to fully digest all it has to say, but even on a first pass it knocked my socks off. Simply wonderful. In terms of “healthy reading,” this book was like a green juice for my mind. 

 

16. Brief Chronicle of Another Stupid Heartbreak by Adi Alsaid

Why?: Adi Alsaid is one of my favourite YA authors. He is the most capable of capturing what it really feels like to be a teenager (particularly a teenager in love). Every time he releases a new book, it jumps to the top of my stack.

Health check: As usual, Alsaid has written a book that stayed with me well beyond the last page. He prioritizes representation without making it feel wedged in for appearances. He writes engaging and flawed characters. He treats his audience as intelligent, and never writes down to them. I remain a huge fan.

 

17. The Orenda by Joseph Boyden

Why?: Following the findings of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls that Canada has been and continues to perpetrate a race-based genocide against Indigenous people, I wanted to make sure that I spent some time this year with books by Indigenous authors and about the experience of First Nations citizens. I wish I had been a bit more thorough in my research, as I discovered later that Joseph Boyden has had his ties to Indigenous ancestry called into question. Nevertheless, this book is undeniably about the tragedies that followed the Columbian exchange, and the legacy of bad faith that lives on today.

Health check: While I did not love the “both-sidesmanship” that Boyden employs here, blurring the lines between victim and victor, I appreciated the book for its historical accuracy and the vivid way in which the author was able to bring 17th-century Ontario to life. It was, in my opinion, too long by a third, but it was a deep and important work.

 

18. There There by Tommy Orange

Why: Again, my goal here is to expand and increase my engagement with Indigenous artists, stories, and issues. There There was highly praised and made a lot of must-read lists, and so I added it to mine.

Health check: Inevitably, reading this back-to-back with The Orenda, I cannot help but see it in contrast and comparison to that book. Both are reckonings of the Indigenous experience in North America; Boyden through historical fiction of the Jesuits and the Huron, and Orange through contemporary fiction of the so-called “Urban Indians” of Oakland. Both focus on Native traditions of storytelling, the importance of tribal identity, and the destructive inheritance of the Columbian Exchange. That is about where the similarities end and, viewed side-by-side, my preference was for There There. The efficiency of language, the pacing, and the can’t-look-away inevitability of the climactic disaster made this a compulsive read for me. As with any converging-narratives book, some of the storylines gripped me more than others. But on the whole, the honesty and vulnerability of this book felt vitally important to our specific moment of reckoning with the atrocities committed against Native populations by centuries of white colonialism.

 

19. Fifth Business by Robertson Davies

Why?: Another priority for me is to read books by Canadian authors. Fifth Business is consistently listed alongside the likes of “Anne of Green Gables” as the quintessential works of Canadian fiction. I found a used copy for next to nothing, so I picked it up.

Health check: I have read a very small number of PERFECT books in my life, but this is one of them. This perfectly wrought, immaculately written novel is one that will take up my thoughts for a long time to come. It is the sort of book that makes me wonder why anyone else has tried to write anything ever since – surely Davies has discovered the Platonic Form of the Novel, and everything else is merely a shadow on a cave wall. Without a hint of irony, it is easily among the five greatest books I have ever read.

 

20. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Why?: This book has been the talk of the YA world since its release. It stayed at the top of the NYT Bestseller list for some insane number of weeks. It takes an unflinching look at one of the great social ills of 21st century America. It is, simply put, a must-read.

Health check: There is a time for the lovelorn whimsy of Adi Alsaid’s Brief Chronicle of Another Stupid Heartbreak, and there is another time for the don’t-look-away honesty and devastation of Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give. I couldn’t read books with this much raw emotion all the time – it would be draining beyond belief. But it was important and truly a privilege to read this book, at this moment, and allow myself to feel the rage and sorrow and helplessness for a while.

 

21. What To Expect The First Year by Heidi Murkoff

Why?: Simply put, I will soon be responsible for caring for a very small human who cannot care for themselves, and I don’t want to mess it up.

Health check: Parenting books are a mixed bag – it is important to read widely and to take everything with a grain of salt. It seems to me the  best strategy is to gather information from all perspectives that will enable each parent to make the best choices for them. That is what Heidi Murkoff does so well in this book. She does not advise, she presents. On each separate topic, she presents multiple schools of thought, alongside statistics and anecdotes, and encourages the reader to make their own decisions. I left it feeling much more confident than I did going in. I can do this.

 

***

Summary

Books read so far: 21

Books by Canadian authors: 3

Genre diversity: 

• Fiction (General) – 9
• Narrative nonfiction – 3
• Children’s Fantasy – 3
• Nonfiction (General) – 3
• Young Adult – 2
• Western – 1

Gender breakdown (Authors):

• Women – 8
• Men – 13
• Nonbinary – 0

Ethnic breakdown (Authors):

• White – 15
• Black – 2
• Indigenous – 2 (disputed; Joseph Boyden’s claim to Native Canadian ancestry has been questioned)
• Latin American – 1
• Jewish – 1

 

Half the year down, half still to go. I am excited, looking at my to-be-read pile and seeing the literary adventures that are ahead. With my goals firmly in mind, I am off to explore new horizons.

A Little Bit of the Old Magic

If 9-year-old me found out what I now do for a living, that kid would be stoked.

The summer I was 9, my parents sent me to summer camp for the first time. Something changed in me over the course of those seven days that never changed back. The stories of those next many summers, returning year after year, could fill a book. Perhaps sometime I will try to capture them, but not today. Today, all that needs to be understood is two things: one, I now work full time, year-round at that very same camp which so drastically impacted the course of my life; and two, that summer camps (all of them, not just mine) employ a very old and very real kind of magic.

Being a kid at camp is like going to see a really great play. Both involve that most delicate of agreements – the suspension of disbelief. In order to truly appreciate a live performance, a theatre audience must also play their own role. They must be complicit; they must agree that within the performance space, everything they see is real. Of course, in order for this to work, the actors and musicians and stagehands and technicians must all perform their parts well, so as not to shatter the illusion. But when everyone – audience and players – get their parts just right, there is a magic in the theatre. Everything falls away and anything can happen. This magic goes back to the very roots of theatrical tradition, when plays were used to portray myths and religious dogma. Seeing is believing. Though we know there is a script and blocking and entrances and exits, every moment feels fresh and new, as if it is being breathed into existence instant by instant. I acted in plays for many years, and only twice have I truly felt that magic in a theatre.

My first performance as Peter Pan (my dream role) in a local production was one of two times I have felt the old magic in a theatre.

At camp, as a kid, I felt that magic every day. Just as theatre is both a concrete and abstract noun (it is both the physical location and what happens there), summer camp is not simply a place. Summer camp is a bit of alchemy that happens when a group of people come together with a common goal of creating magic for children. Children are the best audience, for a play or for a camp, because their beautiful imagination allows them to suspend their disbelief without reservation or second thought. Their world is full of wonderful, impossible things in which they unironically and wholeheartedly believe. Why should it be any different when they are sitting in the seats of an auditorium, or on benches around a campfire?

And summer camp, in my experience, can tap into that magical suspension much more easily, and much more reliably, than even the theatre can. As I have said, for true magic to occur during a play or a show, everyone must be at their peak. The performers must all be simultaneously at their best, giving all of themselves to every scene. The audience must remember to turn off their phones. No baby may cry nor instrument hit a sour note – even these slight interruptions can frighten the magic away and yank the audience unceremoniously back to their disbelieving nature. Summer camp, on the other hand, is a complete immersion. It is not simply the “two hours traffic of [a] stage,” but a constant weaving of spells and illusions to create an entirely different reality.

A campfire in winter. A bit of the old magic shines through.

It is a reality without grown-ups and cell phones, without social hierarchies and the judgement that comes with them. It is a reality where the most valued commodities are kindness and imagination, patience and laughter. It is a reality where pirates and princesses make regular appearances, and where no one asks why that superhero looks just like the canoe instructor. Though someone, somewhere must be keeping a schedule, it nevertheless feels like each moment is overflowing with the possibility of adventure, if you simply let your feet find the trail and allow the breeze to push you in the right direction. It is a reality brimming with the old magic, and composed of it.

Or at least it is for the campers. As life would have it, I ended up working at camp for many more years than I was ever a camper; and as with most truly delightful things, the actual magic is just plain hard work. I remember distinctly the shattering sound that my own delicate faith made as it careened into the hard reality of my first summer on staff. The long days. The demand to constantly be “on”, be engaged, be camper-minded. Once you have seen how the sausage gets made, to borrow an expression from the not-as-magic field of butchery, it becomes hard to remember what it felt like to be that immersed camper. It is a job, like any other. An enjoyable one, if you enjoy the outdoors, and working with your peers, and you are motivated (as I was) by a desire to provide for another generation the same magic that was woven for you. In the many years that followed, I returned to camp again and again – called back by the memories and friends and summer nights under the stars, but never expecting for the old magic to return for me.

A reality check: campfires and all the rest are not magic but hard work.

Which brings me to this week. On Tuesday, I found an orange on my desk. As I said, I now work at camp full time, year round. I live onsite with my wife and my dog. We are expecting our first child this summer. This is my life, my vocation. Magic or not, I am still driven by the desire to be for some other kid what a different staff long ago was for me. So I have an office now, and a desk, and on Tuesday there was an orange there when I arrived in the morning. I didn’t think much of it; I don’t typically eat whole oranges, so I figured someone must have come to see me and left it behind by accident. It was still in its peel, so I brought it back over to the dining hall and put it back in a bowl with its mates.

When I walked into my office on Wednesday, there was an apple on my desk. Uneaten, sitting perfectly conspicuously in the centre of my desk, as a student would leave a healthy snack for a teacher on Leave It To Beaver. Certainly, fruit two days in a row was not a coincidence. I picked up the apple and walked to the basketball court, where my staff were assembling to meet their kids for the day. I asked around to see if any of them had left the fruit. The group assembled all denied it. And so I made a pledge: I would find out the identity of the Fruit Bandit and expose them. And so it was that, with two words, I created a monster and awoke that old magic which had so long lay sleeping.

Because Thursday morning, I arrived to find a single orange slice on my desk, wrapped loosely in tinfoil. I laughed out loud when I saw it. The Fruit Bandit had struck again, and they were getting more creative! Without a second thought, spurred by the magic of play I could feel creeping up from the ground through my toes, I turned on my computer and worked up a wanted poster. “WANTED:,” it read, “The Fruit Bandit. Little is known about this nefarious figure, apart from the fruit-based crimes they commit every morning. They should be considered armed (with fruit) and very mischievous. Anyone providing Brendan with information leading to the capture of this heinous villain will be met with a REWARD.” I plastered my signs around the property – on the outside of my staff’s residences, in the dining hall, at the flagpole. I put out 15 posters, and when I was done the sides of my mouth hurt from smiling. Already the magic had infiltrated my mind, because the Fruit Bandit was no longer one of my staff but a real antagonist, one who was making me look foolish. And I loved it.

WANTED: The Fruit Bandit

I went to the dining hall early at lunchtime. Giddy with excitement at watching the staff and campers react to my posters, I wrote out the daily lunch menu with some fun adjustments. I delighted as group after group of campers and staff filtered in, laughing at the change of decoration. We were playing now, all of us together. People went around the rest of that day calling them “chicken nurgets,” happy to be part of a shared reality we were building together.

A little fun with the lunch (or lurnch) menu.

As we wrapped up lunch, one of my staff asked if I had left a peeled orange in the fridge. I hadn’t. The first orange I had received went back into a bowl on the counter with its peel still intact, and the second had been only a wedge. Then it hit me – the peeled orange must be the rest of the orange from which that morning’s offering had come! I raced to the walk-in cooler and found the suspicious material. I placed it on the counter for all to see, marking it “EVIDENCE: DO NOT TOUCH!” I turned away for a moment to pack away some leftover nurgets. When I turned back, the peeled evidence had been replaced with a whole orange. My mind exploded.

The Fruit Bandit strikes again!

Friday dawned, and I could hardly wait to see the Bandit’s next move. I was not disappointed. On my desk was a single grape in a sealed plastic bag, wishing me “a whole fruit and wholesome day” from “The Lovely Fruit Bandits”. Bandits! Multiple! A conspiracy was afoot! Besides that, many of my wanted posters had been covered up with a ransom-style note, urging me into a game of cat-and-mouse. Others had been graffitied to remind everyone that “snitches get stitches,” in case any of the staff were thinking of turning traitor. My menu had been replaced with another warning, and when I went back to my desk, my grape had been replaced with a whole papaya.

A warning.

My mind reeled. I was caught up in it now – the old magic, the total suspension of disbelief that had made me fall in love with this place nearly 20 years ago. I still do not know who the Fruit Bandit is (or are), but I thanked them at my weekly staff meeting Friday afternoon. They helped me to remember so many things I had forgotten. They reminded me that work can be fun; a lesson I needed desperately. They reminded me that we get out of things what we put into them. They reminded me that imagination is essential, especially once we stop practicing it. And they showed me that the old magic still exists, if only we remember how to tap into its source: through community, and shared belief, and most of all through play.

The Bandits’ last word. Papaya.

Time Out/Game On

I love video games. I was never allowed to own a video game console growing up – the only games I was allowed to play at home were computer games based off of educational TV properties like The Magic School Bus or Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? The fact that I could only play games at someone else’s house only served to further mythologize them for me; just like the bygone days of arcades, video games only existed at some “other” place. When I finally had my own place and could afford to buy games of my own, I did so with abandon. I became obsessed, addicted. I could go into my own myriad theories as to why I was so taken with games – an addictive personality, an ecstatic feeling of control amidst chaos, not to mention finally having unfettered access to something I had long been denied – but needless to say, for a long time they consumed me as I consumed them.
The crux of my love for video games, I can see now with some clarity, is the pursuit of clearly defined goals, or achievements. By following a strict set of rules in a predictable way, I can unlock some sort of reward. In the terminology of games, I am what is known as a “completionist”; I am compelled to do, find, and explore everything a game has to offer before moving on to the next. Much of this is driven by the pursuit of completely valueless achievements – they are only meaningful in that I give them importance. Complete achievement. Cue dopamine rush to the brain. Celebrate. Repeat.
Over time, as I got older and found other passions and relationships to fill the void, my relationships to games grew healthier. I still love video games, I just find a much better balance between them and all of the other things I like to do with what spare time I have. But I have also noticed that, as I work to achieve that balance, I have sought out other ways to continue “achievement hunting”. My mind is still addicted to unlocking, levelling up, and completing. I have curtailed the symptom – too much time playing video games – but not the actual addiction.
This pursuit of achievements is aided and abetted by a growing trend of “gamification” – the process of introducing elements of gaming and achievements into daily life. Through technology, applications, and social programs, we have begun to enable ourselves to “level up” our humdrum lives. I have chosen to gamify my life in many ways, consciously or unconsciously. Here are just a few examples:

1. Untappd
Something else I have come to enjoy at this point in my life is craft beer. I love trying different styles, breweries, and venues, and sharing new discoveries with my friends and family. But I ALSO love the dopamine rush I get when I “check in” a new beer through the Untappd app and receive virtual “badges” (see: achievements) for trying my 5th (or 55th) new pale ale.

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2. Goodreads

Another of my greatest passions in life is reading. My love of reading predates and even supersedes my love of video games. I have always read voraciously, and usually have 4 or 5 books on the go at any one time. But for the past few years, I have also gamified my reading. Each new year, I have set a reading goal for myself on Goodreads, an app which allows users to “shelve” (see: check in) and review books, compare with friends, and track their reading. Every time I finish a book, I shelve it, review it, and watch that tantalizing number tick closer to my annual goal.

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3. Fitbit

I don’t have data beyond my own observation, but I suspect fitness tracking may be the most ubiquitous form of gamification in the world today. It seems that everyone has begun to track their steps, their calories, their sleep. We buy accessories, we download apps, we expand the permissions on our phone to allow ourselves to track and beat daily goals, compete with friends, and obtain those coveted achievements.

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I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with gamification. It has proved incredibly useful in education, helping to engage new generations of plugged-in students with material that they find challenging or uninteresting. As with any technology, I don’t think it is inherently anything. What ultimately matters is whether these gamifying technologies are helpful or harmful to the individual user; in this case, me. I need to ask myself three questions:

1. What is the intended impact the technology has on me?
2. What is the unintended impact the technology has on me?
3. Am I comfortable with the impact the technology has on me?

Let’s interrogate these with my examples:

1. The primary intention of all of these gamification apps, as with everything in our ad-revenue-driven internet, is to gather data from me in order to advertise to me. This is the implicit “deal with the devil” we have all agreed to in exchange for a free internet. I don’t pay for the use of any of these apps (with the exception that I have to buy the physical hardware for a Fitbit); in order to keep their apps up and running, the parent companies sell highly personalized advertisements directed at me based on the data I provide them. Additionally, a second intentional impact of the gamification of these apps is to keep me using them. By adding tiers of accomplishment, badges and achievements, the user experience is designed to keep me coming back to check in again and again. This allows the app to sell not only advertising, but also brand association. A brewery can pay Untappd to have their own designated badge, thereby encouraging me to find their beer at a store or bar to earn the badge.
2. It is important to recognize that the gamification of my daily activities also has impacts on my habits beyond those intended by the developers. Untappd, for example, rewards me for trying and checking in unique beers. As a result, I rarely check in the same beer twice – in fact, I now rarely buy the same beer twice, even if I rate it very highly and thoroughly enjoy it. What is the point of rating and ranking beers if I am never going to use that “research” to go back and enjoy the ones I like the most? Similarly, when I set an annual reading goal on Goodreads, I find that my focus shifts to consuming a high volume of new material (I don’t get “credit” for reading books I have read before) in as short a time as possible. As you can see in the image above, the app relentlessly reminds me of how often I must finish a book in order to keep up with my goal. I am no longer reading for enjoyment, but for quota. This helps me to achieve my ongoing goal of reading more diversely, but I also absorb far less when rushing through to the next book.
3. So am I comfortable with these impacts, both intentional and not? Does the fun of gamifying life, competing with friends, and earning virtual rewards balance out the changes to the way I experience my hobbies? Have I allowed my love of “achievement hunting” in video games to spill over into daily activity, and reduce my enjoyment of my favourite things? I am going to have to sit with that a while; I am just not sure. I suspect that in coming weeks and months I will cut back on gamification, and slow down. Life goes by so quickly – and it will continue to accelerate without any help from me. If I can sacrifice a few meaningless virtual validations in order to slow down and enjoy things along the way, I may just do it.

How is gamification at work in your life? Are you a willing player?

Resolutions Revisited

Last year around this time, I made honest “new year’s resolutions” for the first time in my adult life. I tried to follow the advice of goal setting gurus: making them reasonable and achievable; blending short- and long-term timelines; balancing aspiration and realism. I put real care and consideration into a list of 10 items, and treated them as commitments to myself. Despite taking the enterprise seriously, I was still surprised at how helpful I actually found the exercise to be. I have never been a goal setter. This was unexplored territory to me. But checking in regularly with myself throughout the year (a year in which I faced more “big picture” life moments than perhaps any year previous) and weighing decisions against my resolutions actually helped me a great deal. As a new year rolls over once again, I want to revisit those goals – Socrates and the unexamined life and all that. I want to assess my success (or lack thereof), revise and recommit.

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Looking Back

Here is how I did in 2018:

10. Go outside.

I began the year working in the sales job I had been in for a while, and I could feel the sedentary nature of office life slowly crushing me. There were days where it felt like I was drowning, where the lack of fresh air, creativity, and reprieve from stress would push me to crushing depths. Then, against all expectation, a dream opportunity presented itself. Just as I was reaching the inevitable impasse where I needed to leave my corporate job or risk real damage to my mental health, I was given the opportunity to go outside. I took a job coordinating the Outdoor Education program at the camp I had worked at growing up. Angela and I (in a moment of incredible support from my amazing wife) uprooted ourselves and moved with our dog to a children’s camp so that I could follow a lifelong dream. Immediately, so much felt better. I lost weight, I felt healthy, I breathed fresh air. I went outside.

9. Read more poetry.

I tried. I really did. I didn’t do well reading poetry anthologies or books (or books in general, really – of the measly 23 books I read in 2018, only 2 were books of poetry), but I tried to fill my “spaces” with more poetry. I followed a number of poetry accounts on Instagram and Twitter, so that as I indulged my media addiction and trudged through the cesspools of the social internet, I could at least count on the terrible news being broken up periodically with beauty. It has been a small measure, but it has helped.

8. Write more poetry.

This I did unequivocally. Admittedly, I am very much a novice poet. I wrote a few years ago about coming back to poetry after being turned off of it by the way it is taught in the Canadian school system. The delight that rediscovering poetry has brought me cannot be overstated. It is like candy for my soul. I am unfailingly poor at evaluating my own work, but I strongly suspect that most poetry I write is awful. I am never sure what to do with it – do I post it here? Do I continue to collect it and edit it in hopes that someday someone else might publish it? Do I just write for myself and let it live in Moleskine notebooks? I do not know. What I do know is that I wrote a fair bit this past year, and that I don’t want to stop.

7. Blog. Weekly.

As pleased I am with my success in my last goal, I am equally disappointed in my lack here. Granted, I could not see at the outset of last year the adventures that would be in store – the ways in which real life would simply take priority. I neglected blogging for many reasons. I was busy, I wrote other things, I felt I had nothing worthwhile to say. In the end, I don’t think having a regular posting schedule is particularly helpful for me. It works for some, no doubt. My lack of a cohesive theme or regular “series” of posts doesn’t play easily into posting with such regimented regularity. Certainly having more discipline around writing is something I need to work on if I ever want a real shot at writing professionally, but for now I think I am okay with posting in this space when I have something to say. That being said, I have a couple of projects in mind which I think this may in fact be the right space for, so I hope to have more content up in the coming months.

6. Recharge.

As I said above, I have seldom felt better. There are still days where I feel worn down by it all, and many days I am exhausted beyond belief – but in general, it is the exhaustion of having given myself to something I care deeply about. I had forgotten how good that can feel.

5. Be careful.

It is hard to measure the amount of care I have brought to relationships, decisions, and myself over the past year, but I am conscious of having tried. I have endeavoured to be literally “full of care” this year, and I hope I have succeeded.

4. Get something published.

As with writing, I feel that this particular goal fell victim to a lack of focus. I had every intention of resuming the practice of submitting things I have written to accepting publications, but I simply didn’t do it. Nobody can publish your writing if they don’t see it. If memory serves, I only tried to shop around a single piece this year (the Universal Language of Hide and Seek, which I ended up publishing here) and quickly became discouraged by its lack of an audience. As will become clear in my 2019 goals, I think that my best writing ultimately comes when I stop writing for an audience and simply write what I want to read. But I also need to do the work.

3. Listen to more diverse voices.

This is perhaps the goal which was most omnipresent in my mind throughout 2018. I wrote a series of posts early in the year examining the composition of “Top 100” book lists from major media organizations, and it was impossible to ignore the lack of diversity in what we typically associate with “greatness”. I have tried all year to seek out new and underrepresented voices to broaden my context and understanding, whether in media or literature or music and beyond. This is something I am committed to doing well beyond this year, as I can feel the marked difference it has made in my outlook. 

2. Be content.

Contentment is the pervasive thread throughout any of the success I have found over the past year. Choosing happiness over status or wealth or complacency has sparked every positive change I have made these past months. Being content has enabled me to be other things as well – productive, present, and grateful.

1. Learn to say the sentence, “I don’t know enough about that to have formed an opinion.”

This is something I will continue to work on my whole life, and probably still never be as good at it as I should. In a world where anyone can find an audience online and shout their feelings into the void, it is extraordinarily difficult to show restraint. It is hard to take time to read the article instead of the headline, to find the middle path instead of choosing a side, to wait for enough data to make an informed decision. I will keep trying to find the humility and diplomacy to admit when I don’t have a strong enough opinion to defend, and to seek deeper arguments.

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Looking Ahead

Having looked back, it is time to take what I have learned and look ahead. Here are the things I hope to accomplish, and the objectives to which I hope to hold myself, in 2019:

 

10. Recommit to reading.

9. Write something every day.

8. Get up early.

7. Create for myself, not a market.

6. Do fewer things with more care.

5. Check in.

4. Invest as much time into Canadian issues as I do American politics.

3. Celebrate the successes of others.

2. Be present.

1. Figure out fatherhood.

Rereading Books I Hated in High School

There is no surer way to guarantee that someone will hate a piece of literature than to make them read it in a high school English class. I have remarked before that I find it ludicrous that students today are still reading the same books my parents read as teenagers – not because there is anything wrong with the “classics,” but because sticking to the same early-20th century syllabus holds the dangerous implication that nothing worth reading has been written in sixty years. That combination of perceived “outdatedness” and being forced to analyze and scrutinize every theme, metaphor, and motif means that most books on a high school reading list don’t stand a chance. The way they are taught works against them, and leads to even the most avid, literary students to dread or even despise these books.

I was certainly no exception. I took to Shakespeare from an early age, but beyond that I can count on very few fingers the number of books I was forced to read in high school which I remember with any fondness. In fact, I harbour a deeper resentment for them than nearly anything else in my life – hating these books is an inherent part of me.

However.

Equally essential to me is a belief in two things: personal growth, and second chances. Nearly every “classic” novel that I have read on my own terms, based on my own interest, has been rewarding and enjoyable. And so I set out this year to reread the four books I hated most in high school, to see whether it was the books I hated, or simply the circumstance in which I read them. No spoilers, but I may owe my English teachers (some of whom read this blog) an apology. I still think some of these books are out of date, and would love to see more contemporary fiction studied in high school. But they may not be all bad.

Anyway. Here we go.

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Why did I hate it in high school? Shortly before I read Lord of the Flies, I had also just read Gone With the Wind and A Tale of Two Cities for the first time, and loved them. The classics I read for pleasure and enjoyed were these monolithic tomes with intricate plots and huge casts of characters and endless pages of flowery language. In contrast, I remember feeling like Golding’s sparse, simple language and overt, universal themes were lazy, even beneath me.

Was I wrong? Absolutely. I was wrong. While I disagree with the Times review on the back of the copy I picked up at a thrift store, that “Mr Golding knows exactly what boys are like,” I will certainly concede that the author knows exactly what people are like. His sparse language is the language of children at play. Rereading this book at this exact moment in history felt almost too on-the-nose. This book about the beast at the heart of humanity, the liberation of hate granted by a mask and a crowd, and the feeling that somewhere along the line, we were playing a game that has become far too real; this book could just as easily have been written today as 1954. A more mature me, a little more broken by the world, wept with Ralph for the end of innocence.

Words I’ll remember:

“They walked along, two continents of experience and feeling, unable to communicate.”

“If faces were different when lit from above or below – what was a face? What was anything?”

“…what makes things break up like they do?”

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Why did I hate it in high school? At 15, I think I was too young to appreciate the importance of this book within the context of its time. Growing up in an overwhelmingly white, conservative, rural town in Canada, the realities of the Civil Rights Movement were simply not part of my upbringing. Canada’s own checkered racial history is, or at least was at the time, largely not covered in elementary and high school history class; US history, even less so. Being a well-read and knowledgeable adolescent, I was aware of the key figures and themes of that time; but I would say my awareness of the history of racial tension in America was seen more through the lens of Forrest Gump than Ken Burns. All this is to say, without the ability to truly appreciate the climate that this book was published into, its slow pace and ultimate ambiguity about justice, good, and evil bored me to tears.

Was I wrong? …No. I was right, in that I disliked the book then and still dislike it now, though my reasons are different. I get the book now. I understand why it belongs to that prestigious club who claim the title of “The Great American Novel”. I get how important and brave it must have felt to tell stories of a white man in Alabama standing up and supporting and defending and believing a black man. I can appreciate that. However, other things have surfaced with a second, adult reading that still hold me to my opinion of the book. First, the thing about The Great American Novel is, I truly believe it will never mean as much to someone who isn’t American. So much of the perceived gravity of this book is bound to its capital-G Greatness and capital-A American-ness, and as an outsider to the greatness of America, particularly today, that ignites no fire in me. And second, there are so many wonderful stories about blackness in America that have been told by black voices, and that do not feature an infinitely fair and just white man as the saviour of the black folk. While it is undoubtedly a product of its time, there is part of me that cannot help but feel that it belongs in its time, and that we have moved past the need to hear white people tell stories of white people confronting racism. It is beyond time to retire To Kill A Mockingbird, and replace it with more diverse stories of racial justice.

Didn’t stop me tearing up, though, just a little at, “Thank you for my children, Arthur.”

Words I’ll remember:

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”

“Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I’ve tried to live so I can look squarely back at him.”

“Courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.”

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler

Why did I hate it in high school? The concept of the Great Canadian Novel is note nearly as prevalent as its counterpart to the south, but it still exists. Almost any list of the Great Canadian Novel will include The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz alongside The Handmaid’s Tale and Anne of Green Gables. I went into this book with that expectation – that Richler would have something to say here about Canada and Canadianness that only a very few books have ever captured. In high school, I just didn’t find that to be the case. The limitations were my own, of course – an adolescent self-absorption and lack of empathy were the reason I couldn’t place myself in this story of Jewish youth in Montreal, not any fault in the writing. But as with many Great Novels, Canadian or otherwise, not very much happens; and so if you have a hard time identifying with anything in the story, it can seem to drag on to eternity. Even watching the Richard Dreyfuss film after we finished did nothing to redeem this one for me.

Was I wrong? Meh. I would say my second reading of Duddy was unremarkable. I didn’t hate it, and like To Kill A Mockingbird, I can understand much better now why it is held in such esteem. Perhaps it is once again a matter of expectations not matching up to reality. Of all the books I reread for this project, this is the one I most expected to like as an adult. Mordecai Richler is a notoriously good satirist. Duddy is billed most places as one of the greatest comedic works in Canadian literature. There is just the one nagging problem that, even through the generous lens of black comedy and satire, this book just isn’t funny. It is, in fact, wholly depressing. Well written? Definitely. More Canadian than I gave it credit for? Sure. Chock-full of morals and lessons? Irritatingly so. But funny? No, I dare say it is not.

Words I’ll remember:

“A boy can be two, three, four potential people, but a man is only one. He murders the others.”

Shades of Simon Gray by Joyce McDonald

Why did I hate it in high school? More than anything else, I just found this book dull. It seemed to me like a quintessential “book report book.” It was a book that tried to be deeper and more meaningful than it really was, and in which nothing of much substance actually happened. The copies we read (and the copy I read now, years later) have built-in study guides and reader-response questions in the back – a huge red flag for students. By the time I read Shades of Simon Gray, I had been rereading Lord of the Rings every year for a few years. I had read Gone With the Wind. I think I had even read Stephen King’s It. I was never naive enough to hope that books like the ones I was reading for fun would be on a syllabus, but I remember feeling like this one in particular was simply juvenile.

Was I wrong? I must admit I was. In retrospect, this is probably the first modern YA novel I read (besides Harry Potter I suppose). Before I discovered John Green and Patrick Ness and Maureen Johnson, I was made to read this book in my Grade 9 English class. Reading it now, it has hallmarks of so many of the things I later came to love about YA fiction – a good mystery, layered characters, complicated morality. To be clear, it is far from amazing. The writing is mostly uninspired, the ending a little too “easy.” But it has merit for a reader at 14 that 14-year-old me would not give it. It navigates deftly between genres, finding a balance between contemporary realism, historical fiction, and light fantasy. Because of this, it probably appeals broadly enough to different students to be a fairly sophisticated choice for study. It was a nice bit of escapism; the whole thing took me about 3 hours to get through, and it was time I was happy to spend. I don’t regret revisiting it a bit.

Words I’ll remember:

“People, he realized, were a lot like drops of water caught up in the spring runoff, shuttled into fast-moving streams that collided into rivers and rushed to join the ocean. If you got caught in the current there was no turning back.”

“The branches, Simon, she whispered. Grab the branches.”

*****

What books did you have in high school? Have you ever reread a book and discovered you felt differently about it than before? If not, I encourage you to give it a try!

The Universal Language of Hide and Seek

Four-year-old Julie poked her head out beyond the corner of the medical building, just far enough to peek at me. She was adorable, with dark hair and a radiant smile, in a dress that looked like it had been cut from the fabric of the clear mountain sky. I was half covering my eyes, counting down from twenty in Spanish as she found a spot to conceal herself. Her eyes gleamed as she saw me see her, and she darted back behind the corner to hide. She wasn’t particularly bothered to find a good hiding spot – once I began the search, she could hardly bear to stay hidden for thirty seconds before she would burst out of cover and run, giggling, away from me. We had been playing for nearly an hour now – me counting in my comically Canadian Spanish, her almost hiding, me pretending not to spot her, her springing out and running away, peals of laughter echoing in the thin mountain air. Run, catch, repeat.

All photos courtesy of Carl Pawlowski

We had arrived two days earlier in her tiny mountain village of Tallapampa in the northern highlands of Peru’s Lambayeque region. I was part of a group of students and administrators from St Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario. We were visiting the beautiful South American nation to meet and work with women running a fair trade coffee cooperative, Cafe Feminino, whose coffee we served in our cafeteria back home. Tallapampa is a village of no more than 100 people. A traditional patriarchy has existed in these mountain villages, hours from any populated area, for centuries. Cafe Feminino has worked to empower the women and girls of Tallapampa by helping them to grow and sell their own coffee. We were there to learn from them, and help in any small way we could.

All photos courtesy of Carl Pawlowski

We had taken some basic Spanish lessons in preparation for the trip. A few of our group were near fluent, but most of us only had a grasp on the basics – finding directions if we were lost or needed the restroom, ordering food, asking the time. This didn’t prove to be much of a hindrance in larger cities. Most locals, particularly those serving at restaurants and shops, spoke much better English than we spoke Spanish, and so were able to talk to us quite freely. The influence of America is so strong, even this far south, that many vendors offer better prices if you pay in American Dollars as opposed to Peruvian Nuevos Soles. Up in the mountain villages, however, contact with the English speaking world is almost nonexistent. The isolation inherent in their way of life, the unprecedented nature of our visit, the complete otherness we embodied to them, all were tangible from our first interactions.

All photos courtesy of Carl Pawlowski

When we first arrived in Tallapampa, we were shown around the village. This didn’t take very long. A spattering of squat, clay-brick houses with corrugated metal roofs surrounded a dusty central square, no more than thirty feet across. The only electrical “streetlight” in the village was powered, when necessary, by a gas generator. Just off the village square sat another row of houses, a sort of communal dining hut, and the Puesto de Salud, the health centre where we would be sleeping. After the brief tour, we were immediately challenged to a game of soccer by the men of the village; us, a bunch of averagely athletic Canadians at an elevation much higher than we were used to, versus them, Peruvian mountain men, extremely fit from a lifetime of hard work, and well accustomed to the thinner atmosphere. Needless to say, we lost. I say we, but not all of our travel companions were invited to play. The women in our party were asked, instead, to help the women of the village slaughter and cook a wild chicken for dinner. Even there, in a community whose primary income comes from a women’s coffee cooperative, a dominant patriarchy still holds power.

All photos courtesy of Carl Pawlowski

The culture shock, the alienation of living among these people whose lives were so separate from our own, was far greater than we imagined. We tried to stay focused on the purpose of our trip: to learn from these people whose lives touch ours in the simple daily act of drinking coffee, so that we could take lessons back to Canada of how to be better partners in sustainable development. The villagers were patient and accommodating, teaching and helping us far more than we helped them. Over time we found ways to understand each other, in spite of our limited language skills. We spent a day digging an irrigation system side-by-side with them. They showed us how coffee beans are grown and harvested. And in these simple, mundane moments of their daily life, we understood all that we needed to. They found wordless ways to express their gratitude for our visit, and I hope we expressed that it was us who had reason to be grateful. They were endlessly generous with what little they had, feeding us before they fed themselves out of a very small supply of corn, rice, and wild game.

All photos courtesy of Carl Pawlowski

The morning of our last day in the mountains dawned too soon, and I found myself trying to soak up every detail of this incredible place before we left it. It was all I could do not to think that I was likely never to return. I sat with my back against the cool white wall of the health centre, looking out at the incredible vista of mist-covered mountaintops and patchwork coffee fields stretching out below the village. I understood that, for our hosts, the mountains were more a hindrance than a help. Agriculture was much more difficult in a place like this. But to my privileged eyes, there was something miraculous in waking up to that view. I was writing some thoughts in my travel journal when I saw a pair of beautiful, curious brown eyes staring at me from behind a fence post. I smiled, covering my eyes with my hands and peering out from behind them in the international sign for peek-a-boo. A giggle wafted on the breeze as a small Peruvian girl in a sky blue dress stepped out from behind the post. I recognized her – there were probably twenty young children in the village, and Julie (I remembered her name) had taken a shining to me during our stay.

All photos courtesy of Carl Pawlowski

I closed my journal and covered my eyes again. Sprite-like, she flitted behind the corner of the nearest building, watching for my bewilderment as I opened my eyes again. I obliged, putting on my best “hopelessly confused” face before spotting her with a grin and a point of my finger. This elicited yet more laughter, and so I closed my eyes again. This time I began to count down from twenty, which she immediately understood to mean she had a little more time to hide. This time she hid in an empty metal tub used for outdoor bathing, the top of her head poking out to watch me find her. I made more of a show out of not seeing her, and this time got up to take a look around. This delighted her so much that she sprung right up and ran away, stopping occasionally to make sure I was still chasing her. I caught up to her and swung her up into my arms, making her shriek with glee. I put her down and she stood, tensed, ready to run the second I closed my eyes. I did, and the game began again.

All photos courtesy of Carl Pawlowski

Some time later, my travel companions found us sitting in the shade of the clinic, drained from so much hiding and seeking. It was time to pile ourselves and our packs into the beds of two white pickup trucks and start the long drive back down to the coast. I was overwhelmed by heartache at this call back to reality. In those few hours of play, we had found a connection that transcended language or background or privilege. We were from vastly different worlds, Julie and I. I was traveling the world as part of a post-secondary education she would likely never dream of. She may never see the world outside of the network of coffee plantations that litter Lambayeque, never mind somewhere as incomprehensibly different as Canada. But as I climbed into the back of the pickup that was to take us back to familiar food and comfortable beds, I waved goodbye with tears on my cheeks.

In those moments of play, unhindered by any need for words or economics or philosophy, we were the same. We were kindred spirits – curious, whimsical, seeking a friend in this vast and unknowable world. We spoke the same language then: a language of goodness and tenderness; a language of fun and laughter; a language spoken with the heart, not the mouth. The language of humanity, where the only words that matter are kindness, love, and understanding.

The ME in HOMETOWN: an autobiographical photo tour of small-town Ontario

Growing up within driving distance of North America’s third largest metropolitan city, there are many people who, when asked “where are you from,” just say “Toronto”. It is easier that way. Rather than having to explain where Guelph is in relation to the Big City, and where your small town is in relation to that, you just say you’re from Toronto. As urban sprawl has continued to consume more and more communities into the “Greater Toronto Area,” it is no longer that inaccurate either. And besides, chances are the person you are speaking to was just asking to be polite – they likely don’t care all that much anyway. Of course, other communities in the region are beginning to make a name for themselves outside of the Ontario bubble. Someone from my small town nowadays may well say they are from Waterloo, which has become known for its growing tech and startup communities.

I am not from Toronto. I am not from Waterloo. I am not from Guelph.

I am from Fergus.

Emblems of Fergus’ Scottish heritage are everywhere. Tributes to the many freed slaves who were among the area’s first settlers are decidedly fewer.

Being from Fergus is as essential to who I am as my name, or the colour of my eyes, or the way my voice sounds. Fergus made me. I am not just from Fergus; I am of Fergus. When my parents moved us in a few weeks after I was born in 1991, Fergus was barely more than a village of 8,000 people. In the 27 years since, the population has more than doubled (more than 20,000 at last count), and I have grown with it. I haven’t lived in Fergus full-time for a number of years now – first leaving for school, then work, then marriage – but I still feel daily the impact that growing up there had on my personhood.

I would like to take you on a tour, if you’ll come. Not a tour of Fergus, per se – though there are some excellent historical walking tours available if you are ever in town. I want to take you on a tour of my Fergus – the Fergus of my memory. I will do no fact-checking, present no history nor anthropology. If you are interested in those sorts of things, the town seems to have a fairly complete Wikipedia page. My goal is not to educate or drive tourism. This is not a list of Places To Stay or Things To Do. This is my hometown – the one that made me who I am – the way I remember it.

Our first family home was here, on Philip Court.

This is where it all began. Philip Court – the street I grew up on. The trees are bigger now. Our first house is just down the road, on the right. From here, my universe expanded. First our house, then the yard, then the street, the neighbourhood, the town itself. There’s never traffic on a road to nowhere, so my brother and I were safe to play up and down the street with the kids of the other young families who had all moved in together as development was completed. In the winter, I can remember the plow piling snow on the raised circle in the middle of the court, creating a mountain beyond our wildest imagination. Today, kids are probably discouraged from tunneling into large piles of snow, for fear of collapse; but back then, we turned that mountain into an anthill of caves and passageways, and stayed out until the lights came on. I didn’t learn what it was to be a neighbour from Mr Rogers; I learned it here, where everyone knew and looked out for one another.

This may be the first trail I ever “hiked”.

This walking trail passes by the old neighbourhood. At some point, it runs (or ran, once) through a dense thicket of trees and brush. That section of the path may have run all of 20 metres from end to end. Based on the omnipresent trash that littered the spot, it was probably a popular hangout for teenagers at the time; I don’t think I was ever there at night to find out for sure. But whenever we walked as a family, we insisted on taking the path, so we could walk through this magical fairy forest just down the road. Most of the stories and games we imagined as kids can find their roots among those trees.

The facade is crumbling and the grass is overgrown at the original St Joseph’s Catholic Church

This is the church where I was baptized, and which we attended every Sunday until it got to be too small and a new one was built. The church parking lot was a social hub; here we planned many impromptu sleepovers, sprung on our parents after mass and completely throwing off their Sunday plans. One Sunday a month, there were cookies in the parish hall. I always thought it was a little spooky that there were unmarked pioneer graves nearby.

By my count, I must have spent more than 10,000 hours in this building over 9 years.

Of course, the majority of my waking hours growing up seemed to be spent at school. My mom even taught here for the first couple of years, until my second brother was born and she decided to take some time off with three (eventually four) young kids at home. I could tell a million stories of friendships that began here (and continue to today), or teachers whom I idolized (and still do), or of course the lessons learned (and some forgotten); I was undoubtedly and indelibly shaped by all of these. My most vivid childhood memory took place here, though, and had little at all to do with school.

I remember with picture-perfect clarity a morning over 20 years ago – I must have been in kindergarten or shortly thereafter. My dad drove me to school, and I did not remember until we pulled into the parking lot that I had show-and-tell that day. There was no time to go back home and find some precious item for me to share. My dad, being resourceful, pulled a large photo plaque out of the back of the car. It showed a mountain slope covered in fresh, powdery snow; skiers had descended the mountain in pairs, carving perfect patterns of criss-crossing curves down the steep incline. It was an interesting photo, and my dad explained how it was created and offered it to me to show the class. I said thanks (or at least I hope I did) but declined. I would just tell my teacher I had forgotten, and bring something the next time. I said goodbye, and immediately felt a wave of devastation wash over me as he drove away. I felt ashamed and overwhelmed with sadness that I had turned down the picture. It suddenly occurred to me that it may have been my dad’s prized possession (it wasn’t) or something he was really excited to share with me (I’m pretty sure it was just quick problem solving), and I had rejected it out of hand. I may have been 6 at the time, but I can still feel the dread and shame I felt the rest of that day that I may have made my father sad. I still get a lump in my throat writing about it now. I think about that morning more often than is believable. I have never talked to him about it – I don’t even know that he would remember. But it is seared into my memory like a brand. That one story probably says more about me than anything else I will write here.

The Fergus library: safehouse, seat of all knowledge, shelter from the elements.

The first place I can ever remember walking by myself (besides school – and the first time I walked there alone I believe I got lost) is the library. They have remodeled the inside  since I moved away, but the outside is still the same; perks of being an historic landmark. The library was air conditioned, which our house never was. I remember walking downtown in the morning on a hot summer day to find a book (or six), and not wanting to leave the cool oasis of the library. I would sit and read an entire book in an old leather chair through the height of the afternoon heat, and then as the evening cooled off I would check out the rest of my stack and walk home. It is a testament to both my parents and Fergus itself that in those days before cell phones, if I told my mom I was going to the library and then didn’t come home for hours, there was never any panic. At least none I knew of.

Before it was a marketplace, it was just a market – the greatest in the world

This old foundry building used to house the Fergus Market. It has been converted into self-contained shops now, but back in the day it housed wonders. I have nothing against the current tenants of course, but to my knowledge none of them sell pewter wizards or steam-emitting dragons or farm-fresh meats, or that holiest of grails: hockey cards. Somehow, the farmer’s market in our small town was home to not one but two collectibles vendors. I don’t ever remember having a formal “allowance” like some kids have – but there were few things my parents could leverage to motivate us more than a trip with dad to pick up a few packs of hockey cards, and spend the rest of the day trading, sorting, and admiring. My cards are still at my parents’ house (much to their chagrin) and will likely hit Kijiji soon. But the market is also gone, so it’s alright.

The scene of one of very few childhood traumas.

Of course, even the most idyllic of towns has an insidious side. In later grades, my friends and I were too old to take the bus to school, so we rode our bikes. I remember one day discovering that my bike, which I had left outside of the garage the night before, had been stolen. We never found it. In the meantime, I still had to get to school, so I rode my mom’s bike instead. One day, as my friends and I raced down this hill on the way home, the right pedal fell off. I remember time standing still as my forward momentum shifted sideways and I fell to the road, leaving most of the skin of my knee behind me on the pavement. The pain was agonizing, as was the dread of telling my mom I had broken her bike. My friends walked with me the rest of the way home as I bled into my sock. They are still among my closest friends today.

The sign and the books are all gone now.

I wrote a few months ago about visiting Roxanne’s Reflections, the local bookstore, for the last time before it closed. I won’t go into it again here – the sadness is still close to the surface. I drove past the other day – the space is now home to the reelection office for the local Progressive Conservative candidate in the upcoming provincial election. He’s a neighbour of my parents, and by all accounts a gentleman. The books are all gone, though.

The Grand Theatre, formerly the Theatre on the Grand. 70 years before it changed my life, it was opened as a movie house.

Second best for second last: my second home, the Fergus Grand Theatre. It got a facelift recently, restoring some of its original glory; to my eyes, it has never looked better. When I was nine, my mom signed me up for the local children’s drama club. This is one of a handful of truly pivotal moments around which the rest of my life orbits. I played basketball growing up, but I never dreamed of playing professionally, or even in college. But from the moment the stage lights hit me for the first time in this 250-seat theatre in Fergus, I was convinced that nothing else would ever bring me joy. Time, money, and life have a way of sobering dreams – I didn’t end up going to school for acting, I chose jobs over shows, and eventually I came to accept that performing was probably in the past for me. A few years ago, things came full circle as I got to return to the Grand to play Peter Pan, the role of a lifetime for me. If I never do another show, I will be happy knowing that my last play was that one, back where it all began.

I proposed, with a ring I bought at the local jewellery store, here beside the Grand River.

The last stop on a tour of my Fergus is here, on a small rock shelf beside a waterfall. This is where I proposed to my wife, Angela. She fell in love with Fergus as I fell in love with her; and even without the rose coloured glasses of sentimentalism, she loves it for so many of the same reasons I do. We hope, one day, that our lives will lead us back here as we look ahead to a family of our own. It seemed fitting, when I thought about how I wanted to ask her to marry me, that it should be here. In a way, I had shown her myself by showing her my Fergus. I was saying, “Here is where I’m from; here is who I am.” We were married a year and a half later, at the new church they built to replace the one that was too small.

I do hasten back, whenever I can.

I am not from Toronto, or Guelph, or Waterloo. I am from Fergus. To walk in my shoes, you have to walk here. It is changed and unchanged, timeless and yet intrinsically tied to a very specific time in my life. You can no longer grab a scoop of ice cream at the Cherry Bomb, or play 5-pin at the Fergus Bowling Lanes, or swim in the old outdoor pool; but those things existed, once, and still do for me. Fergus is my hometown. Maybe it’s like yours, maybe it isn’t. Maybe it was exactly as I remember, maybe it wasn’t. But when I hold a mirror up to that town, I see myself looking back.

Top 100 Book Lists: Observations from the echo chamber

Over the past month, I have evaluated four different “Top 100” book lists from four major media organizations:

• TIME’s 100 Greatest Young Adult Books
• PBS’s The Great American Read
• The Guardian’s 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time
• Amazon’s 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime

At first, I simply wanted to see how many books I had read compared to lists of books I “should” read; however, in the spirit of being more critical and deliberate in my media consumption, I thought it might be worthwhile to also examine the composition of these sorts of lists. I came up with four data sets to pull from each list which would give me a fairly complete picture of the diversity (or lack) present in each list, and give me insight into the methodology of assembling a “Top 100” style list.

It is worth noting, I think, that none of these are “listicle” or “click-bait” style lists, as you would see produced by viral content factories like Buzzfeed. These lists were put together by news and media organizations who, ostensibly, embody responsible literary journalism. As we will see, that responsibility has been met or missed to various degrees. These lists also represent different genres of written works. I don’t mean to make an apples-to-apples comparison of how “Top 100 Children’s Books” lists are published; instead, I wanted to look at lists from a variety of genres to see how media outlets approach this kind of task more generally.

So, what did I use to evaluate the lists? How did each list fare? And what, if anything, can we learn about our reading and media consumption habits? Let’s dive in:

Criteria 1: Gender Representation Among Authors

The first data set I looked at across the four lists was how close they were to gender parity among the authors represented. Even in 2018, none of the four lists featured any gender non-binary authors, so we are strictly speaking male/female. While none of the lists quite reached parity, TIME came closest with 43 female authors. The Guardian, in its list of nonfiction books, had the worst disparity with only 19 women out of a total 102 authors.

The most women on any list was 43, from TIME’s 100 Greatest Young Adult Books.

How does this compare to gender representation within the publishing industry itself? The number of books published by men and women is notoriously difficult to quantify, primarily because so many books are being published, and there are so many ways to publish a book these days. One statistic that is measurable, though, is how many books by men and women are reviewed by literary journals each year. Vida is an organization for Women in Literary Arts, and they publish an annual study on precisely this statistic. Consistently, men make up an average of 66-70% of books reviewed in major journals like the New York Times Book Review and the London Review of Books. This is not surprising, as the same study found that men held jobs within those publications by roughly the same ratio. This average is also reflected across the four lists I reviewed. It seems that the only place where women outnumber men is in the publishing industry itself, with women reportedly making up 78% of publishing jobs in the United States.

If women make up greater than 50% of the population, why are books by women reviewed (and, let’s be honest, probably published) far less often? It is because repressive systems self-perpetuate. Men have been publishing (and voting and owning property and being paid a living wage and…) for centuries longer than women in Western society. Another study, this one by Tramp Press, found authors submitting manuscripts listed their literary influences as only 22% female – even though 40% of submitters were women. Female authors still find more inspiration from their male predecessors because there are more of them. Just as in every unjust system which has historically placed less value on women, it continues to take time to overcome the imbalance.

One final note: it is interesting that all three articles I found on gender imbalance in publishing are from the Guardian; yet when it came time to assemble their own Top 100 list, they had the worst female representation of the bunch.

Criteria 2: Racial Representation Among Authors

The same study that found 78% of jobs in publishing are held by women also noted than 79% of those jobs are held by white people. Thus it should hardly be surprising – if 79% of the people making decisions about what gets published are white – that books by people of colour are in shockingly low supply. The lack of diversity in publishing is well documented; a study by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center found that just 8% of children’s books in 2014 were written by non-white authors (the number grew to 12% in 2016). If these four lists are an accurate representation of their respective genres (YA fiction, nonfiction, adult fiction) then the numbers probably carry outside of children’s lit as well.

No list includes more than 17 people of colour among its authors.

Leading the pack in the category of racial diversity is PBS’s list for their Great American Read series with a whopping 17 people of colour represented. The Guardian, again the publisher of the widest range of articles on race in publishing, brings up the rear once again with a mere 7. As was the case with the gender disparity, people of colour are fighting an uphill battle against hundreds of years of zero diversity in publishing. They are also disadvantaged by the fact that these lists were published in America and the UK – where at best there is a historical lack of diversity, and at worst institutional and casual racism is at its worst since Jim Crow.

One of the commitments I made to myself at the beginning of the year was to do whatever I could, in my reading and purchasing habits, to support more diversity in publishing. The world is a more interesting, nuanced, fair, and lovely place when you step outside of the bubble of your daily lived experience, and try to understand things from the point of view of another. Stories, poems, words – these things have so much power to change the way we think and the way we understand the world; however, continuously reading stories, poems, and words that reinforce and reflect your own reality will change little. But even that is a privileged observation, because I have never felt there was a lack of stories that reflect my reality.

There is so much to navigate here, with this issue in particular. Everyone – everyone – should see themselves reflected in media. Representation matters. The only way this massive imbalance (that in no way reflects the racial diversity of readers) will begin to get better is if we make diversity a priority. It will take a conscious effort from both readers and publishers to give the spotlight to people of colour. As a white person who very much hopes to publish something, someday, everything tells me to hope for the status quo; things staying the way they have always been gives me a huge advantage by pure dumb luck of my birth. But I do not hope for that. The world is not short of white voices. I hope I have to fight like hell to get something published among a sea of diverse voices. And when it finally happens, I hope it is because I have written something worth reading, not because people who look like me get published 8 times as often.

Criteria 3: Cultural Diversity Among Authors

Despite their seemingly global titles (100 Greatest Young Adult Books, 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time, etc.), these are still lists assembled and published by American and British media. The curators of these lists have not read every book ever written in every language on earth; their choices are inescapably informed by their circumstances. American and English schools overwhelmingly teach American and English books, and adults generally continue to read what they read when they were young. It takes a conscious and concerted effort to seek out books from outside of your cultural upbringing – they are less available, in many cases both physically (ie- in bookstores) and linguistically (ie- a lack of translations). But titles like “The 100 Best Nonfiction Books We Have Ever Read, and We Grew Up In England” just don’t carry the same weight as “All Time”.

The Guardian’s list of nonfiction books wasn’t worth charting – they were all British or American

I don’t mean to imply that the compilers of these lists are not widely read, culturally. Amazon’s list presented books from 10 different cultural backgrounds (poorly and broadly defined on my part). But even on the most diverse list, 69% of the books were by American authors. This sort of Americentrism will always exist in American media; in the same way, I am sure that a list published by The Globe and Mail would contain more books by Canadian authors (I would be right). Media is a product of its environment breaking out of the reinforcement loop of promoting American books to an American audience would require a massive shift in prejudice and perception that is, frankly, unrealistic. However, I do think that, in lists like these – particularly from relatively responsible and respectable media organizations like those I featured –  there is an onus on the curator to be more thoughtful in the way these lists are compiled.

Assembling a list under a title including superlatives like “The 100 Greatest” or “All Time”, and proceeding to populate that list with books from a single culture, ethnicity, or gender does nothing but perpetuate the echo chamber. As I pointed out in most of the individual reviews, this sort of favouritism towards Anglo-American writing under globalist headings, when not examined and interrogated, sends a single message: of all the books ever written, nearly all the ones worth reading were written by people in two countries. In fact, China published drastically more books per year than any other country, while Great Britain does not publish significantly more annually than Japan. Looking at these lists, you would think Asia has no publishing industry at all.

There are a few ways I can see that publishers of these lists could confront the inherent bias in their compilation: either by being more explicit in their titles (PBS’s The Great American Read does this, to be fair), or else by speaking to why these sorts of regional and cultural biases exist. People in the developed world (particularly in the British and American Empires) have had access to two critical resources essential to publishing that others simply do not have: money and time. Relative wealth and social security, often at the expense of the cultures underrepresented on these lists, enable aspiring writers in America and Great Britain to take the time to write, and to get paid for it. Their publishing industries have thrived, perhaps to excess, because they are in the extraordinarily privileged position of being free to write for a living, if they can. To compose a list that so heavily features books written in the Anglophone “West” without acknowledging the deep-rooted biases that led to the imbalance is unfair to the hardship, beauty, and value in global literary traditions.

Criteria 4: Date of Publication

The final data set I pulled from the lists looked at a different type of diversity. I wanted to see how each list prioritized new material versus what are broadly called the “classics”. I have expressed many times my feelings on the Canadian/American school system’s focus on classic literature. I think there is certainly a balance to be struck – a proper understanding of literature today relies on an understanding of its predecessors – but I think that most curricula today are still far from balanced. Most of the books I read in high school are the same books my parents read in high school; and even back then, they were “classics”. In the same way that Anglo-centric lists create the false impression that the only books worth reading were written in English, “Classic”-centric lists (whether Top 100 lists or high school syllabi) create the impression that the only books worth reading were written over 50 years ago. So, did these particular lists avoid that trap?

TIME’s list of Young Adult books had the greatest percentage of books written since 2000, which makes sense based on the boom that the YA industry has experienced in what we could fairly call “the Age of Harry Potter”. The most balanced list overall, in terms of relative distribution across all eras, was actually PBS’s Great American Read. PBS also gives the most insight into how its list was compiled; they asked 7,200 Americans what their favourite book was, and pulled the results from that poll. Assuming that they used due diligence to ensure a representative sample of the larger US population participated in the survey, it makes sense that the books included would be as diverse as readers themselves, spanning every epoch of (still mostly white, male, and American) writing.

The Guardian’s list of nonfiction appears to be nearly the inverse of the other lists, with 47% of the books on that list being written before 1900. But to be fair to the Guardian list, nonfiction was the dominant form of writing for centuries, perhaps even millennia, before literature and fiction overtook it. Because of this, they suffer a bit from being placed on the same scale as the other lists – the 47% represents a long and varied intellectual tradition that cannot easily be compared to the 20th century fiction heavily features on the other three.

So what?

What does any of this matter? Was it worth the excessive number of hours I put into all of this? Can we really learn anything of use from examining lists? I think we can. Here are my takeaways, and feel free to add your own (or your criticisms of mine!) in comments:

• We live in an echo chamber. We read what is familiar to us, which makes books (and poems and articles and movies and television shows) that represent our established point of view more successful. The more successful and pervasive a piece of work becomes, the more likely it is to end up on a list like this – where it is referred to still more consumers, making it more popular and further reinforcing the status quo.
• Representation matters. Today, in 2018, we still are not doing enough to ensure that everyone, regardless of how they identify themselves, sees themselves celebrated in literature and popular culture more broadly.
• Motive matters too. Brittany at Perfectly Tolerable, who originally brought the Amazon list to my attention, made a great point in the comments on that post which I had never considered. Another important element to look at is whether the publisher of the list stands to gain anything by what they include on the list. In the case of three of the lists, the answer is presumably (hopefully) no. But in the case of the Amazon list, Amazon is A RETAILER OF BOOKS. So of course they stand to gain from publishing a list titled “100 Books to Read in a Lifetime,” and then including purchase links to the Amazon page for each and every one of those 100 books.
• It is worth the effort. As I have said, I made a personal commitment to read more diversely and more conscientiously this year. This exploration of the way that the media encourages people to read (ultimately, these lists serve as recommendations) has only served to harden my resolve to do what little I can do to find voices and works that challenge my point of view instead of reinforcing it. Reading comfortably only promotes complacency, and I will not be complacent.

One more thing…

Of course, there is one more thing – the thing I set out to do in the first place. I was inspired by Thrice Read, when I started this whole thing, to take a look at my own reading history against these lists. How did I do?:

• TIME: 43/100
• PBS: 54/100
• The Guardian: 28/100
• Amazon: 40/100