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5 interesting things

5 interesting things


Skaters on the Rideau Canal

I have been focusing on reading a lot to catch up on all of my library books and subscriptions. Of course, there is also family time and playing the Witcher II and a good amount of time drinking tea and having conversations with Mr. Tucker. I don’t plan to keep to any schedule here but I do enjoy sharing what I’ve read and a variety of thoughts I have had on certain things. For example, I realized that I have been online for THIRTY YEARS and it’s funny that my original optimism has reversed-course and I find myself divesting from the online world. Perhaps that is a conversation for another time. Here are some things I read this weekend:

1 – The Prestige Recession, “The decline of the critic mirrors the decline of the mediums they cover. Music and film are industries whose relative cultural value has dipped, thus their critics’s cultural influence has plummeted. In realms like politics and the culture wars, however, critics are thriving. Where there’s power and money, critics can have influence and get paid. When the money and power dry up, the beat does too…Cultural criticism and contextualization aren’t going away. They’re being de-professionalized. They’re switching mediums. What was a grand(ish) vocation has been demoted to a hobby and another form of “content.” It feels inevitable. We’ve gotten so used to it by now.”

2 – I first heard about Neal’s Yard Dairy in the book, The Lost Supper by Montreal writer, Taras Gresco. I didn’t realize how firmly planted the place was in the counterculture of the past few decades, nor how important of a piece it played in bringing back a British food culture. Nicholas Saunders: the forgotten genius who changed British food. “The central question of Saunders’ life is what happens when you try to create an alternative and it becomes so successful that it is co-opted by other people into the dominant culture. It was a tension he was never quite able to resolve, except in a few small projects… The compulsion that made him treat the question of yoghurt production in the same way as the chemical composition of an ecstasy pill found its purest expression in things that were done solely for the fun of it.”

3 – Great, as soon as I build a gaming computer and get back into it I read, The Tremendous Yet Troubled State of Gaming in 2024. This is really for econ and gaming nerds. “There are several reasons behind the many layoffs detailed above, but the first may be the most important. It’s also the most overlooked and most counter-narrative: video game revenues are falling… A lot of the challenge here is economical. In addition to the aforementioned increases in costs per developer, the number of people needed to produce a AAA game have grown as publishers expand the scale and scope of their games —more and higher-fidelity cinematics with professional motion capture and vocal performances, greater environmental and enemy diversity, more thoughtful NPCs and side quests. The enormity of this effort is easy to measure, as is the output.” Clearly, this piece goes on to describe all of the likely challenges facing the industry.

Adjacent, but as for myself, I was shocked to learn that even though it’s been 15 years or so since I played a game, the prices for top-of-the-line games were still hovering around the $80 mark – which hasn’t really changed since the 90s. Moreover, I could play older games that I had missed over the years for a measly $1-$20 – and I am not a multi-player kind of gal. I get that people who have gamed over that period of time have probably finished all of the games they want to play, but even today I get *flash sales* for brand new games with great worlds, stories and graphics. I also recognize the sheer amount of titles being released probably dilutes potential customers in ways that were impossible in the 80s-00s.

4 – Advice from people who really started living when they found out they were dying (H/T to The New Escapologist). I have a love/hate with these sorts of articles. On the one hand: yes! Please go out and live your one wild and precious life! On the other hand, it’s much easier to explain your erratic behaviour of skydiving and mountaineering if you have a terminal diagnosis. Otherwise, people just think you are shirking your responsibilities as an adult. It would be amazing if we could reconcile the two things. Wouldn’t it be amazing if people could sell everything and travel for a year without getting the side eye and tsk tsks from their friends and family? Either way, this is good advice for the perfectly healthy as well: don’t delay, do what you love, enjoy every moment you can (except the painful ones, like the time in the dentist chair and the like).

“You get caught up in that world of work: pay your bills, eat dinner, sleep, repeat. But now I truly feel very different about money. What’s the point of earning, earning, earning if there’s no joy in your life? When I watch really power-driven people who want more and more, I want to tell them it’s the small things in life that are beautiful. We live in quite a toxic world, but it’s your choice what you expose yourself to. I get up, I walk my dog, I listen to every single bird that chirps. I’m grateful for that.”

5 – I came across this recently (at least, the short Instagram post that inspired it) and it has really resonated. I have stepped away from some social media lately in an effort to reduce my exposure to things that make me upset but that I have no control over. Instead, I am focusing on doing a daily photo (#DITL) on the Post Morbus Instagram. If people want to throw hands in their own comments sections, Imma LET THEM.

Anyway, she has three parts to this theory that I find is so profoundly helpful to me, especially as I revisit my investment into family, friends, acquaintances AND online interactions:

A – Detachment: just let people do what they are going to do & detach yourself from an emotional response.
B – Let people fail: let them learn and grow by not rescuing them.
C – Let them be themselves: don’t try and change people.

That is all for this Monday. I cannot believe that we are heading into February this week. I did end up cancelling my Globe and Mail Saturday paper subscription (ugh. They made me call on a telephone and speak with a real human and everything!) but I kept the digital version. Naturally, this concluded with them charging me for both. Modern life is rubbish, indeed.

Faith, Hope and Carnage (and alcohol)

Faith, Hope and Carnage (and alcohol)

Link
• Why are things so expensive in Canada?

• The New Escapologist on on a video of a video floating around about how 9-to-5 culture sucks. I was telling Mr. Tucker that in 2002 when I lived on one side of the city it took me 15-20 minutes to get to the other side of the city for work (by car). When I went back to work in 2012 it took me 45 minutes to get from one side of the city to downtown (by car). For most of 9-to-5 history, people lived close to work or within a reasonable commute. But cities haven’t been moving people as efficiently as they should be and now commutes are longer, traffic is worse and public transport is a farce.

Books & booze
I’ve been reading the book (or, really, the very long interview) Faith, Hope and Carnage by Nick Cave and Séan O’Hagan. I have been enjoying Nick Cave’s The Red Hand Files quite a bit this year since discovering it so I figured it would be very similar. I was not wrong. It’s funny because I am very much goth-adjacent but have never really listened to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. So this week I am changing that and going back and listening to some. I find it very strange that I didn’t listen to this in the 90s but I suppose we can’t know or experience everything.

I didn’t know anything about journalist, Séan O’Hagan but it’s clear that these two men have known each other for awhile. So when I googled him, I came across this piece he did for The Guardian in 2002: I Can See Clearly Now. I don’t know if it is serendipity or the universe colluding to send me love letters for change or what but Mr. Tucker and I had justjust been discussing making 2024 another sober year.

For some background, like other people we started the pandemic in 2020 by increasing our alcohol intake substantially. Having a backyard with a pool makes it also very easy to slip into long, leisurely summer days of floating on top of the water with a drink – especially when there is no where to go and nothing to do. By the fall however, it had become abundantly clear that we were spending a lot of time and money on alcohol. So on Halloween night 2020 we quit alcohol for a year.

Like O’Hagan, quitting alcohol wasn’t as much of a worry as I thought it would be. I braced myself for the need to sooth with alcohol and I just didn’t have as bad of an experience as I had been anticipating. There were some difficult moments – specifically when we rented cottages on Manitoulin Island with two other families – but they passed quickly. But of course at my friend A’s birthday party on Halloween 2021, I was back in the cups.

Honestly, I have never gone back to my previous levels of alcohol consumption. Since then I have been more of a sporadic and not habitual user. It’s been a bit weird because I can’t tease out whether or not it is because alcohol really affects my PLS or if I just have naturally gravitated away from the stressful years where I used alcohol as a crutch? Maybe both? The pandemic definitely eliminated a lot of stressful elements from our lives after we got over the initial stress of being in a global pandemic. We no longer hosted elaborate holiday meals no one appreciated (but felt obligated to attend). Holidays became joyous, small affairs. We no longer had to rush around from activity to activity for the kids or entertain people who imposed their unwanted, judgement-filled visits on us. The last stressors we truly have that are weighty at the moment are the condo and Mr. Tucker’s job – and getting rid of one means we will get rid of the other!

[I was going to opine here about how sobriety culture is now replacing wine mom culture it seems but I feel like that would be a distraction. Perhaps a post for another day but in general, alcohol is most certainly poison but so are a lot of things. Having said that, sobriety has zero risks aside from being pegged as not fun at parties]

At any rate, it’s interesting that Mr. Tucker and I have always jived when it comes to our behaviour – both good and bad. So it isn’t surprising that we are matched in our current alcohol consumption. Since 2024 will be the year we a> take up gaming again; b> he will hopefully retire it will be interesting to see how that changes many things in our lives. Until then, we head into the holiday season with a budget for some celebratory drinks.

The different stages of a good life

The different stages of a good life

When I was in my teens and 20s my idea of travel were of traipsing around Europe staying in hostels and meeting new people. I was raised by someone who loved travel to exotic locales and who had traveled extensively so it was a natural fit. I did do some of that when I was younger and it was lovely.

Conversely, my paternal grandparents owned a condo in Florida and drove down in the winters where they stayed for 4-6 months a year. When I was younger the idea absolutely repulsed me: why bother going anywhere that you wouldn’t experience history, culture and art? I wanted new landscapes and new food and to meet new people! It confounded me that they had never left the continent and I couldn’t see the value in going to the same place year-after-year. I also never understood the concept of sitting on a beach all day. ZZZZZ…boring! Cruising? Well that was for the newly wed and the nearly dead!

Mr. Tucker and I ended up getting married in the Caribbean because my parents paid for it and one of them was very keen to plan it in a certain place on a certain beach. I was neutral on the place but we did end up having an amazing week. When we arrived Mr. Tucker and I sat on a beach for the first time with a drink and he turned to me and said, “NOW I get why people enjoy this so much!”

When I was in my 20s I also had dreamed of owning a country house with acreage where we would be self-sufficient so that we wouldn’t need to have as much of an income. I had been inspired by The Tightwad Gazette and books that Helen and Scott Nearing wrote. While Mr. Tucker and I sat in our 530sq ft condo downtown, we often would look at farms for sale. At one point we were even starting to look at properties that would fit the bill.

In the end, when I got pregnant with the eldest we ended up in a mid-century suburb having traded homes with a relative who also owned half of the condo. Mr. Tucker was not happy but this relative always wanted to retire in the condo so we sucked it up and moved into the house. It remains to this day the biggest fight we have ever had. Not all was lost though: we met some really great friends in that neighbourhood, people who we continue to be close with to this day. Unfortunately, the relative had told us that they would sell us the house at one price and then reneged on the deal because condo life hadn’t turned out the way they wanted it & they wanted their house back. They signed the condo over to me (we had invested a lot in the house) and we all know how that is going.

We ended up buying a new house also in a mid-century suburb because by the time we were forced to move, the shine on the country life had worn off. Our kids were 7 and 9 at the time and were used to the amenities of the city, I had a career, was investigating ongoing medical issues at the time, and we wanted the kids to stay in the same school system. Oh, and I did want a puddle.

We don’t regret the decision now that we are middle-aged and in retrospect a farm would have taken our lives in a completely different direction. We probably would have ended up back in the city anyway with my medical needs.

So what gives?

Age gives.
Mobility gives.
Finances give.
…and life changes.

You change.

It happens slowly over time but your ideas about the future change when it actually becomes the future. If we had pursued our dream of owning a farm and being self-sufficient it would have been disastrous when I became disabled. I probably wouldn’t had my career and with it the disability benefits that pay 70% of my pre-disability salary (indexed to inflation). It would have left us scrambling for money and resources. I am grateful that the dreams I had in my 20s didn’t come to fruition, it would have ruined my middle age.

We have also had multiple cruise vacations (you can’t hostel through the Panama Canal) and have a beach resort vacation planned for this winter. We have changed so substantially in the 21 years that we have been together.

Now, at 47, I even see why my grandparents bought a place in Florida: as you get older, the winters feel harsher, walking in the ice and snow becomes more dangerous and the lack of sun really affects you. Last year I read an article about Margaritaville in the New Yorker and I didn’t feel revulsion, it made complete sense! This isn’t to say that I am rushing out to buy a house there but it occurred to me that for a certain group of people living there is an absolute dream.

Mr. Tucker and I have been discussing our ideas of what a good life really is. We used to dream of him retiring early and us being able to take off and travel the world. But going to Puerto Rico in 2022 for two weeks was an absolute nightmare. Travel post-pandemic was a nightmare (4 hours to get through security in Toronto), when we got there it was a comedy of errors (bald tires on the rental, getting lost in the mountains, roaches in the hotel room, no restaurants open in the town we stayed in etc.) and it has since really turned Mr. Tucker off of travel. While we still laugh at the stories we have from that trip the sour taste still hasn’t been completely eliminated from his mouth.

The only reason I got Mr. Tucker to agree to a trip this winter is that it is a> a direct flight; b> an all-inclusive resort; c> he will theoretically be retired so he won’t have to leap back into work if it is a horrible experience. Our trip in 2022 felt to him like work and then he had to jump right back into work when he got back.

Life is a series of experiences and those experiences lead to change about what you consider a good life. 14-year-old me loved go to the mall and shop for name brand clothes I could show off to my friends. I couldn’t have imagined ever NOT wanting to go shopping when I was that age. 47-year-old me avoids the mall like the plague. I also hate the idea of more stuff to clean, maintain and store. Impressing other people also holds no interest for me. Age is also why driving down to Florida for a month in the winter becomes more appealing over time as flying has become more hostile, post-pandemic. Getting to the airport early and dealing with delayed or canceled flights seems like more of a nightmare than just driving and taking our time. 24-year-old adventurous travel me is not 47-year-old mobility-impaired me. We are completely different people with different needs, goals and desires.

This isn’t to say that we wont fly places and travel more when good deals come up, I am just saying that I finally understand why people enjoy different types of travel. For our future travel, it may just look more tempered and less adventurous. When Mr. Tucker retires we will still have 5 years until the last kid turns 18 so a lot of that time will be spent staying home. Next year the eldest will be in grade 11 (here the biggest years to get into university rely on your grades for 11&12) so we won’t be able to pull her out of school to take advantage of a good travel deal. Also, the kids will be working in the summer so travel will be out during summer holidays as well.

Recently, Mr. Tucker and I were discussing how excited we both were to build new gaming computers this November. He got pensive for a minute and then said, “you know what? Even if we never traveled again, I would be ok with that. I like that we have our little house that has everything we need and we have a really good life right here.” To be honest, I have to agree. We have SEEN a lot and DONE a lot and if we never get to travel again we will have still done more travel than most people. Having a cozy little life with a roof over our heads and food in our bellies, time to work on our hobbies and see our friends IS a good life. A very good life, indeed. And that is enough.

Go for the eyes Boo, GO FOR THE EYES!! – OR On nostalgia (2 of 3)

Go for the eyes Boo, GO FOR THE EYES!! – OR On nostalgia (2 of 3)

Earlier, in the spring, I was wide awake late at night while everyone else was asleep. Where I live, there are four definitive seasons and in my mind, the real start of spring is the day that you can leave all the windows and doors open and you don’t freeze your arse off. I grabbed a drink and sat down and started to watch a show. It was so nice being up late when everything was quiet with the warm breeze flooding the living room that I was instantly transported to what it felt like when I was young and spent most nights awake while everyone else slept. Instant nostalgia.

The next day Mr. Tucker and I chatted after dinner. “You know, I had a revelation last night.” Oh what, he asked. “I don’t have to keep normal hours anymore. If I want, I can stay up all night and sleep all day. I mean, I wouldn’t because I want the kids to see me have a normal schedule, but it hadn’t really hit me that I don’t HAVE to.” No, you don’t! He confirmed. I ended up telling him about the spring night air and how it made me feel and of course we both lapsed into a bout of nostalgia. Then I said something to him that surprised him. “I want to get back into gaming.”

Some history about me & gaming: in the 80s my brother got a Tandy computer from Radio Shack. Suddenly, an entire world of puzzles was open to my brain and we played hours upon hours of Space Quest, Police Quest, King’s Quest and of course, the pièce de resistance: Leisure Suit Larry. I fell in love with games as a kid with a special love for Super Mario, which I played on our Nintendo.

So of course, in the 90s I settled into a comfortable love of all the new games that came out. I was especially drawn to beautiful strategic and puzzle games like Civilization and Myst but I also enjoyed a bunch of first person shooters such as Space Hulk (I still have nightmares of them coming out of the walls). I played long, long hours sitting and trying to finish the levels eventually giving up only when I was too exhausted to play anymore. I flirted with gaming on and off over the years but it wasn’t an issue for me as a single person who had nothing but time. When I met Mr. Tucker and we started dating, we only had the one computer in the house that could play the more resource-intense games. We didn’t play much those days anyway. We had a decent income and spent a lot of time out with friends or sitting on the balcony having drinks.

Enter Baldur’s Gate.

Baldur’s Gate was the first video game that I had really gotten into in a long time and it was love at first play. Mr. Tucker and I took (resentful) turns playing it on the one computer but we both played really long hours. Not as long as I used to play when I was younger but still dedicating a big chunk of our time outside of work to it. Eventually, things came to a head one night when his 10-year-old son came over for the weekend. Naturally, he wanted to play, too. I found the anger welling up inside me of having to share *MY* time with him. I have always known that I have an addictive personality, but I was so shocked the level of rage I had at a child over a stupid video game that I actually just gave up video games completely. We both kind of did. I just didn’t trust myself to not get sucked into a black hole of lost time. Since we were engaged and had plans to get married and have kids soon, it also just made sense to leave gaming behind. I would be lying if I didn’t say I missed it, but my inability to control how much I loved playing made it detrimental to my larger life goals.

Of course, life moved on and now the kid I resented over the video game is an incredible man of 27 (who, incidentally, still loves video games). His dad and I went on to have two kids that are teenagers now and who are mostly independent. That, in conjunction with Mr. Tucker’s retirement being on the horizon made me think of building a gaming box again.

Mr. Tucker got really excited when I said this! He, too, was happy about the prospect of gaming again!. Also, as adults who have a decent income we could also now afford two decent gaming setups. As a consummate researcher of all big purchases, he has spent time reviewing specs and adding/deleting things based on research and/or pricing and he is having a great time doing it. The current goal is to buy the components and build the boxes around November (we still need to save a bit).

What’s hilarious is that every game I have wanted to play in the past 16 years I have stored in my head “for later.” When I mention them to Mr. Tucker they are always SO CHEAP (because they are old, like me). So I am looking forward to replacing my current social media scrolling with gaming. I don’t spend a ton of time on social media anymore but it’s going to be great to revisit some old favourites and discover some new ones!

So I have that to look forward to this by the end of the year, which is super exciting! So while that is one thing, this spring’s nostalgia got me thinking about the things I loved about being young and having more time than money. So now that I am old and have time AND money, can I get back to that feeling I had in my youth? (link updated Friday, August 11 – LIES! I posted on Sunday the 13th). Is it possible to go back in time and have the things you loved back then AND the things you love now?