For most writers, when shit goes down, we need to write it out. Whether it’s morning pages, a too-long to-do list, or an essay, writing becomes a way of processing. It helps us organize our thoughts and see our feelings reflected back at us.

Plus, for whatever reason, turning the inward outward is cathartic.

Writing Good Boy, Dewey was hard but necessary. I knew the best way through the shock and overwhelming grief of losing my once-in-a-lifetime dog would be through words. A day or two after his passing, I started a private note in my phone with all the details I never want to forget about him, including the dozens of nicknames he accumulated over the years.

E.g. Dewey = Lord of Breathington County, which turned into Lord Breathington, then became Breathington, and eventually settled into just “Breath.”

The behind-the-scenes of Good Boy, Dewey is less about technical changes and more about how you write a single piece that does something, or someone, that important justice. As I started writing, I felt like I was airing just one sliver of our story. I even said, “I feel like I could write an entire book.”

Dewey’s death just felt, and still feels, too big to be filed down to one essay or one highlight reel. I have a highlight reel for every place, every season, and every perfectly timed fart.

And so, the main difficulty with this one was writing through the emotion (and hearty dose of trauma), knowing it would never feel complete, and accepting that incompleteness could be part of something still worth publishing.

Changes from Early Draft to Published Version of Good Boy, Dewey

My first version of Good Boy, Dewey was less of a draft and more of an attempt to get as much of Dewey down as possible. It was a lot of bullet points and raw typing through the tears (thank god there’s no video footage).

I wrote the opening in a free flow, which read mostly as a frantic inventory. Then, I began to organize the sections into something another person could read. The opening line, “Dewey came to us from grief,” was a gift from the shower, and I knew I had a jumping-off point.

As I shaped the essay, I had to accept the exact thing I was struggling with: not all of Dewey could ever be captured.

So, with some self-talk and the reminder that I could write an entire book about dog grief if I wanted to, I agreed to let one snapshot be enough for now. This shift alleviated the pressure and let me write an essay that wasn’t just for an audience of one.

Here’s how I turned the dumping ground into something habitable:

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When I heard the news about Dolly Parton, I, like most of us, thought, “Fuck, no. Not now. We need her.”

At the risk of sounding like a grief-monger who’s unlocking a new bereavement niche in real time, loss has been on my mind. Since the sudden passing of my literal spirit animal, Dewey, a week ago, death and all its accoutrements have been up to my décolletage.

In high school, my Mom’s best friend was my guidance counsellor. My file was conveniently reassigned to her in the 11th grade. This meant I no longer had to forge doctor’s notes and pretend to have hypoglycemia to get the “good lunch” period. Knowing my guidance counsellor well enough to hot tub at her house also meant that I got to see behind the polyester curtain.

I was privy to the gossipy, bleeped versions of who got caught fucking who in a stairwell, and the real reason our French teacher was on “medical leave” (shoplifting).

But as in every high school, legitimate tragedies happened too. One kid would get thrown from a truck after a bush party and die. Someone else would jump off the town’s barely-tall-enough bridge. Many more would cut themselves curtain bangs.

Minus the curtain bangs, when these tragedies happened, crisis therapists were brought in. I assumed that the sombre announcements of “support made available” meant little more than a public school PR stunt and a trifold pamphlet.

But according to my guidance-counsellor intel, the students who sought extra support were rarely the ones directly affected. It was often the same select students, returning for every school-wide tragedy.

I share this meanderment because I am not one of these students. I am not a grief second-hander. I don’t like death, solemn faces, crying eyes, funeral sandwiches, or the general theatrics of people I have fun with being recast as “deeply sorry”. I will take the gorgeous bereavement flowers, but please, leave the pity at the door.

This is why my reaction to Dolly surprised me. Losing her could have me reaching for more than a pamphlet.

She was fucking special.

In the most divisive stretch I’ve been around to peg-leg this earth, she was a uniter. Everyone loved her. And more than that: everyone felt like they knew her. Like she was somehow part of them.

It felt like, despite never meeting her, you could share a slice of lemon meringue pie or a glass of bourbon with Dolly and she’d really see you. At some point, she’d unclip the brooch you’d been eyeing from her slim-fitting blouse, insist you keep it, and you’d spend the rest of the afternoon laughing.

As a Canadian thirty-something who grew up on a dairy farm in Ontario, Dolly and I had no obvious reason to cross paths. Yet, I dressed up as her for my 29th birthday, listened to the deep cuts and even the Hallmark-esque movie misses, and have always shortlisted “Dolly” for both human and dog-naming purposes.

So, coming off the tail of losing Dewey, my tippy top love, and another blonde-wigged constant, I was looking for answers. How could two greats go down so close to one another with so little warning?

In grief, we search for silver linings. We want anything to file down the sharpness.

Over the last week, Dewey’s silver linings have been: the first nine years are the best ones, anyways; we were at home with him and jammed in an estimated 18 years of quality time compared to office 9-to-5ers; and at least we didn’t have to smell his breath getting worse (although truthfully, I’d love nothing more).

But then, on the day of Dolly’s departure, an unexpected connective tissue between Dewey and Dolly formed.

What if, both fresh off planet Earth, they met in some rhinestone, white-leatherette waiting room in the “in between”?

They have a lot in common. They both emanate pure joy, never cast judgement, love music and country living, and look great in blond wigs (I have the pics to prove it).

Amidst the “fuck no, not Dolly” texts, I floated this new theory to my Mom, husband, sister, cousin, and three close girlfriends. Everyone agreed.

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My husband, Kevin, said, “Dolly’s the only person I’d trust Dewey with.”

I reminded him that in the last three months, his Oma, Grandma, and coolest punk-rock Aunt had also died. This did not change our preferred custodianship.

“Dewey and Dolly would just have so much fun together,” I added.

Kevin agreed.

Then, driving home from dinner, my Mom sent me a photo of a younger Dolly holding a Boston Terrier.

Immediately, I let out a half-gasp. Suddenly, this grief-driven delusion felt intuitive, and to woo-woo folks, possibly even rational.

When I got home, I started digging and found dozens of posts about Dolly being reunited with Popeye.

Of course Patron Saint Dolly had a Boston Terrier!

And as it turns out, Popeye wasn’t a peripheral character in Dolly’s big life.

In fact, she credited Popeye with saving her in the early 1980s. During what Dolly described as a suicidal episode following an “affair of the heart,” she pulled a gun from her nightstand.

Dolly recalled looking at the gun for a long time before picking it up. Then Popeye came running upstairs. “The tap-tap of his paws jolted me back to reality,” Dolly said, and she put the gun down.

Dolly later described Popeye as “a spiritual messenger from God” who intervened when she needed it most.

The rest can’t be corroborated and could be Boston Terrier-enthusiast propaganda, but apparently Dolly and her husband, Carl, treated Popeye like their child. When he got sick, the story goes that they took him to Auburn University for experimental treatment. When he died, Carl apparently built him a tiny coffin and buried him beneath their bedroom window. According to the same telling, he was so grief-stricken that it took years before he could look at Popeye’s toys or photos again.

Whether or not grief turns us into storytellers, I don’t know.

Since Dewey died, I’ve asked aloud, “Where does all the love go?”

When the thing you poured it into is suddenly gone, what happens to everything you still have left to give? Does it get redistributed? Does it attach itself to something new?

For Dolly, we won’t have to travel far to find her. She’ll play on the radio and appear in a gaudy sea of textile sparkle for generations. But for those who die more quietly, without a public library of greatest hits, it’s on us.

Maybe the stories we tell about them, the coincidences we attach meaning to, and the silver linings we decide to believe in are really just places to put the love.

So Dolly, until we arrive at your rhinestone waiting room, please take care of our precious boy. Go ahead and introduce him to Popeye. He doesn’t like other dogs at first, but it’s not aggression; it’s shyness. He’s always felt a kinship with his own kind, so he’ll love you both.

And if he brings you his ball, throw it. Just don’t expect him to catch it.

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Dewey came to us from grief.

When we got him, I wanted him to be another dog. I wanted him to be our two-year-old Boston Terrier, Wayne, who had just died while we were on vacation. I wanted him to arrive as a clone, complete with the same wildness, inside jokes, and oversized ears.

Save for the ears, Dewey did not.

Right away, this 10-week-old puppy held eye contact in a way that was revealing. Unlike his predecessor, who jumped from speeding boats and snuck out from fenced-in yards, Dewey was sensitive, patient, and eager to please. He watched how we moved and delicately inserted himself into our lives.

I think back to Dewey’s puppyhood and wonder if he just took up the space we allowed. We were still grieving Wayne, and hardly took any photos of baby Dewey’s chubby, guinea pig-like frame. He played with hand-me-down toys and was passed off to neighbours who asked to have him over.

Half-heartedly, we taught Dewey to sit, walk on a leash, and stay. We didn’t have the energy for puppy training classes again, but he didn’t need anything more. He was good from the very beginning. He felt like an old soul, ready to bypass the basics to go in deeper.

I look back at this blip, nine years ago, and can't believe my own indifference. It shows me how hollow and depleting grief is. You toggle between wild fits of crying and a cool numbness where a Mack truck could roll over your toe without you even flinching. It’s the body’s way of shedding then protecting, shedding then protecting, until the sharpest parts are worn down and you’re only left with the aching core.

After that first summer, Dewey would become one of the greatest loves of my life.

We’d take him on countless flights to our East Coast cottage, tucked in a travel bag at our feet. During our stint as secret shoppers for a Chinese buffet chain, we snuck him into dozens of locations, where he’d lie silently under the table eating pieces of teriyaki meatball. At home, his bed was an oversized Icelandic sheepskin bean bag chair I’d bought off a fashion photographer.

Dewey travelled, ate, and dreamed alongside us.

Always one for the camera and equipped with a full-faced smile, he starred in our annual Christmas cards that featured a holiday “Dewey” pun: “Dewey hear what I hear?”, “All I want for Christmas is Dew,” and “I’ll have a Dew Christmas without you.” With a lukewarm reception, we’d mail the cards out to family and friends, cementing our reputation as dog-crazed DINKs.

Dewey was, objectively, very handsome. His black-and-white fur was so thick, it felt like a buzz cut running through your fingers. His ears smelled like crackers, or Tostitos, depending on the day. He was barrel-chested and wiggly. In his younger years, we would get stopped on the street.

As he grew older, and his lower deck of teeth finally surrendered to a tug-of-war-heavy summer with his best friend, Porkchop, people mostly commented on his smile.

To get Dewey amped up, all you needed to do was puff air in his direction. “Spider-Man fingers” had the same effect. If he saw the fingers, he’d race around the house, frantically looking for a toy.

Whenever we came home, he couldn’t contain himself. He’d immediately rush the door, jump on us both, cover us in kisses, then promptly disappear. He had so much excitement bubbling over that he had to grab a toy or down a few kibbles to regulate.

He spoke enough English to rival an average two-year-old. He knew “go get Papa” meant to look for Kevin. He’d scour the house until he located him. He could follow a finger point, knew the difference between going to the “truck” or “car”, and would stop dead in his tracks at a dramatic, off-Broadway gasp.

More often than not, when I went to the bathroom, he’d follow. When I showered, he would lie on the bathmat, then lick my wet legs when I got out. When Kevin played piano, he would sit at the pedals, seeming to absorb the music.

Complete with a drunk-uncle-level snore, Dewey was only allowed in bed in the morning. He’d wait until 6 a.m. to enter, jump onto the bed, and curl up behind our legs. He was a polite bathroom-goer, summiting the steep ravine in rain or snow to do his business, then sprint back.

He was always loyal, considerate, and constant.

Besides us, Dewey’s other great love was Chuckit. So much so that we couldn’t keep the ball inside. If a ball were tucked on the upper shelf of a closed pantry, he’d somehow find it and station himself nearby, whimpering all day and night.

One of my favourite things about Dewey was that despite fetch being his greatest passion, he was remarkably bad at it. Occasionally, the stars would align, and he’d leap like a Great White and snatch the ball out of the air. More often, the ball would bounce off some part of him or sail straight past. None of this ever discouraged him. He’d bring the ball back and eagerly await his next throw.

A gift from losing Wayne was that, besides those first weird weeks, we never took Dewey for granted.

Whatever reservations we have about telling our people how much we love them, we had none with Dewey. In a way that would appall both dog and non-dog people alike, I would kiss him on the lips and whisper in his ear, “Love you more than anything.” Sometimes at night, I’d wake up, go find him on his bean bag chair, and literally just breathe him in.

Wearing the scars of Wayne’s sudden passing, we helicoptered over Dewey. Whenever we were away, we worried. His wellbeing was our permission to unwind. His zoomies at the park were our gold-star satisfaction.

He was the barometer, the center, the thing that turned two adults into a family.

Naturally, our greatest fear was losing him. But at nine years old, despite having the teeth of a ring-toss carnie, he showed no signs of slowing down. He ran with gusto to catch and miss his ball, leapt enthusiastically across culverts, and nibbled our ears during his nightly witching hour.

This is what makes this next part so hard to write. It makes my stomach turn, and my breath tighten.

It was a day like every other. Dewey ate normally, went for a walk, and was even greenlit to have his Chuckit ball inside. We left for a couple of hours with no sign that anything was wrong. When we got home, Dewey greeted us at the door, jumping up and wagging his entire body.

It wasn’t until I put my hand in puke that I noticed anything was amiss. Even then, I thought it was just an upset stomach. But within the next forty-five minutes, before we could even get our bearings, things went from “he’s clearly not feeling well” to grey gums, cold paws, and a seizure-like collapse.

We rushed him to an emergency vet, but by the time we got there, he was gone. He died before we even got in the car, but neither of us was willing to admit it.

At the beginning of the summer, Dewey lay in the garden while I planted my basil and chilli peppers. The peppers have turned red, but he’s not alive to see me harvest them. There was one egg left in the container we cooked his final egg from, but I ate it this morning.

He had a final walk. A final poo. A final snuggle behind my legs.

We’re still sleeping in the same sheets, but soon we’ll move into a house he’ll never know.

We buried him at the farm near Wayne and a few other family dogs. My dad, a stoic dairy farmer with more minutes spent staring out windows than words spoken, shared something with us that morning. Whenever he mows past the place where the dogs are buried, he calls to them, one by one, out loud.

“Good boy, Wayne.”

“Good boy, Gus.”

“Good boy, Albert.”

“Good boy, Archie.”

And now, “Good boy, Dewey.”

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I had a lot of fun writing A Folking Good Time.

Generally, when I sit down to write an essay, I move through the writer’s grief cycle: denial, anger, bargaining, procrastination, and getting into the snacks real heavy.

This latest essay wasn’t entirely different, but eventually there was real joy in latching onto this weekend snapshot and pushing it from the internal to the external—a home birth, if you will.

I haven’t written a humour essay anchored to one event in a while. Initially, I didn’t think there was much to gnaw: we went to a folk festival, had low expectations, and somehow captured that once-in-a-summer magic.

I assumed I’d use the festival weekend as an anecdote, then transition into something more reflective. As I’ve mentioned before, I rarely start writing with a plan. I have an idea or a story I’ve been ruminating on, and then I see where it goes.

I tend to think that a story I’d gab about on the phone over isn’t big enough for print (or post). But increasingly, I think this is old, limited thinking.

Some of my favourite writers, like David Sedaris, can feather out a single scene, build character, and artfully weave humour and life inside something as mundane as an ass-bleaching waiting room (fear not, he never wrote this).

For A Folking Good Time, I found myself staying in the scene for the fun of it. As a result, a more blown-out, cinematic approach unfolded. I got to include the extra details, dialogue, and narration that I often skip in favour of threading more observations together.

I want to do more of this kind of lived-in, deeply burrowed writing.

But without further ado, here’s what I cut and why, along with some of the method behind the editor’s madness (me).

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Changes from Final Draft to Published Version of A Folking Good Time

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As we get older, capturing a slice of magic isn’t so easy.

Somewhere between invoices, status updates, and Uppababy strollers, we forget to find the fun.

It’s harder to get the band back together. And when we do, the greatest hits hit different.

But occasionally, we get a gift.

This is what happened a couple of weekends ago at a folk festival.

If your eyes rolled at “folk festival,” I get it. Or if your reaction was, “A folk festival…sounds nice,” we’ve likely bumped into each other at a farmer’s market.

I see both sides, and would estimate that a folk festival runs a 50-50 shot at being one long shoeless trust circle of tambourines and slacklines.

Having never been to a proper folk festival, I envisioned scenes from A Mighty Wind. For those who haven’t seen it, it’s a Christopher Guest mockumentary about folk musicians who look like they smell of mothballs and barely-there natural deodorant. It’s chock-full of banjos, ukuleles, and closed-eye singing in billowy blouses.

While my assumptions à la A Mighty Wind weren’t entirely off, there was range.

The three-day bill was filled with small Canadian indie bands, some radio names, and a couple of bigger acts that kept the lights on. In fact, there was enough range that our senior tent neighbours were pissed. More on Bridgett and Peter later.

When we bought tickets in the winter, we were charmed by the idea of camping. The thought of sleeping in nature and waking up to the gentle can-cracking of tent neighbours sounded quintessentially summery.

However, as it turned out, this weekend came on the heels of Canada Day, which fell, rather inconveniently, on a Wednesday. This meant that we, along with four other adults, three dogs, two kids, and a baby, had already spent the week overdrinking and undersleeping at a family cottage.

By the time the folk festival began, we hadn’t been home in over a week. We were bloated, covered in bug bites, and our car had taken on the form of a donation dumpster in a thrift store parking lot.

Lacking much camping know-how, we didn’t pack just one tent for the weekend. We brought a hodgepodge of tents and a rat’s nest of poles in a garbage bag.

The tents were leftover carnage from our outdoor wedding, where we kindly invited guests to camp on my parents’ property in a torrential downpour.

Wet and quite literally deflated, many guests opted to “abandon tent”.

Instead of an air mattress, we had two yoga mats and one beach chair held together by duct tape. My clothing for the festival was strewn across several grocery bags and one BÉIS wheelie suitcase.

I did, however, manage to pack three western-style hats. One of them, a relic from the Calgary Stampede, has a crown so comically tall that I hit my head getting into the car.

I knew I’d be too embarrassed to wear it, but made sure to pack it anyway.

By the time we’d mustered the energy for this final leg, the campsites had been open for a day and a half. While no bands played until late afternoon Friday, first-come, first-served camping started on Thursday morning, ensuring that those of us rolling in before the first guitar strum still felt late.

My husband Kevin and I, our garbage bag of tents, and two Ziplocs of pasta and bean salad arrived late Friday afternoon. Thinking alcohol wasn’t permitted in the campground, we spent an extra hour skilfully hiding every can beneath the trunk floor, where you’d normally store a spare tire.

We rode in dirty, avoiding eye contact with organizers, like two middle-aged traffickers.

Unsurprisingly, being fashionably late—like being fashionable, period—was not immediately rewarded in folk world.

On-site, we discovered there were virtually no campsites left.

I also found the term “campsite” was being used rather loosely.

Instead of carved-out plots, the campground resembled a Black Friday parking lot. Like a Type B game of KerPlunk, there were cars, tents, and lawn chairs scattered everywhere.

Sensing there was nowhere for us to park or set up our vinyl shop, an organizer offered to help.

He enthusiastically pointed to a vacant eight-by-eight-foot patch.

“Oh, okay. You mean on top of that blue tarp?” I said, trying not to sound too perturbed.

“No, sorry, that spot is taken. I meant in front of the tarp,” he gently corrected.

He was pointing to a narrow strip of weeds wedged between the occupied tarp and the road. It somehow made the blue-tarp site feel aspirational. The new spot placed us inches from the road, where we’d surely be trodden by both man and roof-racked Subaru.

Desperate for a solution, I pointed at an open patch of dirt between a couple of VW Westfalia campers.

“Ah, yes. Unfortunately, that’s a special section reserved only for Volkswagen vans.”

Without replying, I squinted.

In a way that’s specifically Canadian, we locked eyes and smiled, waiting to see who would crack first. I knew our weekend depended on it, so I rattled off a “close to the road,” a “think they’d mind?” and one long “we’d be soooo grateful.”

After a few beats, the organizer broke and went off to ask if two chumps without a VW crest could enter the exclusive territory.

A couple of minutes later, across the roped-off fence, a topless man in a straw hat waved us over.

Before anyone could change their mind, I wheeled my suitcase across the potholed dirt road and parked it behind their VW.

“Thank you! You truly just saved our lives! If we were allowed to bring in booze, I’d hand you a beer right now!” I said.

“No booze? Who the hell said that?” said Peter.

Only then did I notice that both Peter and the organizer were holding Molson tall cans.

Another sigh of relief.

Next came the difficult task of frankensteining one tent out of the wreckage of many.

During what can only be described as the absolute climax of a heat wave that was previously referred to as “hotter than Satan’s crotch” by a large woman on an outdoor escalator, we began to assemble.

With beads of sweat rolling into our eyes, Kevin and I began to unravel too.

“Hold it up straight!”

“That pole is fucked. Throw it away!”

“Wait, did you just mix up the good pole pile and the bad pole pile?!”

After sweating out a third of our body weight, we hauled in the last of our supplies, then stepped back to admire our crooked, mismatched tent.

“You’re gonna scorch to death in that thing,” Peter called over.

He wasn’t wrong.

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On our folding lawn chairs, we sat in the shade of Peter’s VW trunk and cracked open a cold drink.

We drank in silence, slowly shedding everything the afternoon had just demanded of us.

Taking in our surroundings, I clocked that Peter and his wife Bridgett’s van was one of the few painted with sunflowers, raindrops and blue birds. It was also covered in bumper stickers—a collection of pasteable personality reveals.

Arms are for hugging.

I brake for cloud formations.

What if the hokey pokey really IS what it’s all about?

After a few minutes, we started getting texts that my sister, brother-in-law, and nieces were inside the festival.

And so, we did what any respectable 30-somethings would do at a family folk festival: we each hid a roadie on our person. Then, I stuffed a hunk of mushroom chocolate bar in my bra.

Now, it should be stated that I am not a drug person. I hate weed and hate the harder stuff even more. But on rare occasions, I dabble in the most microscopic of mushroom microdoses. We’re talking a dosage so small, a four-pound Pomeranian could eat it without incident.

With that, we were ready to head inside and test the limitations of festival security.

Having no bags, we were immediately waved through. All we had to do now was find our people and figure out which stage had better music.

The evening was a classic mix-up of grease-smelling food trucks, a plastic-chaired beer tent, and someone selling homemade soap and didgeridoos. There were silver-haired women dancing freely, children running around with glowsticks, and unattended picnic blankets and wagons everywhere, with trust the only witness.

While my sister and her husband chased after the kids, Kevin and I settled into our home for the weekend. Stretched out on our blanket, the day finally stopped asking anything of me. I even wondered if I needed to buy my own tie-dye, festival-branded hat with neck flap.

With the main stage beside a lake, thousands of tiny gnats and moths fluttered through the air as the sun fell. We ate our microscopic crumb of mushroom chocolate and invited the night in.

Around 10 p.m., Father John Misty walked onstage.

I’d seen Father John Misty a few years before at a theatre venue and enjoyed it, but wasn’t blown away. There’s something about a tight folding chair and a $17 drink that pulls you out of the moment.

But by this point, the silver-haireds and families had all gone to bed. This left approximately fourteen people at the festival, Kevin and I included.

To get to the stage, there was no weaving through the crowd. There were no “sorries” or “scuse mes” to secure a better vantage. We simply walked to the front and bellied up against the speakers.

And then, something shifted.

As the insects danced in the concert lights and a cool breeze came off the lake, I could feel myself letting go.

Father John is one part poetic lyricist and one part Righteous Gemstones-style old-Vegas pastor. As he performed the words I’d heard recorded but never fully absorbed, I found myself smiling with every tooth.

Then my eyes began to well up.

This was the summer moment we spend so much time trying—and often failing—to manufacture.

But this time, I knew I was happy while the happiness was still happening.

As Father John danced around the stage in a vintage suit, Kevin leaned over and said he could smell him.

Apparently, he smelled like mothballs.

Soundtracks of the weekend

^{Holy Shit by Father John Misty is the song that brought me to tears}

^{Causeway Road by Adam Baldwin is East Coast Canadian storytelling at its finest}

^{Feeling Fine by Ocie Elliott is easy listening from two harmonizing legends}

^{The Obelisk by Wax Mannequin is an after-the-fact tune we have on repeat}

^{Every Time the Sun Comes Up by Sharon Van Etten is a song I was excited to hear live}

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The story behind Ugly Photo began after attending one of my best friends’ baby showers. We’re a group of friends who met at university, and are rarely all in the same place. This reunion—and, of course, my friend’s protruding stomach harbouring new life—called for a “group photo.”

Once the camera snapped, and the photos revealed themselves, I knew I had something worth sharing.

I’m not someone who runs away from embarrassment. Instead, perhaps as a way to offset a misgiving by gathering more data points, I want you to know about it. I also want your mom, cousins, and weird imprisoned uncle to weigh in as well.

And so, I told Ugly Photo as it happened, with embellishments and, naturally, a dream-sequence vignette. When I first released the post in April 2025, I had 134 subscribers. It mostly circulated among people I knew in real life, who understood me or had a front-row seat to the scorn.

Quickly, it became my most popular post, igniting a string of DMs from friends and foes from the Pacific to the Atlantic.

Cut to today, when I decided to rerelease the essay with paired audio.

Now, admittedly—and I don’t know whether this is the personality trait I have where, if I’m not suffering in some way, it means I’m not doing meaningful work—I feel cheap rereleasing something. It feels a bit like cheating, and more like content hacking than writing about whatever is presently going on in my life.

At the same time, I think it’s a fun essay, and back when my mailing list was smaller than the number of employees at any Ohio Olive Garden locash, it didn’t get a ton of eyes. And so, I thought, “Fuck it. It’s summer, I’d like to invite myself onto a boat somewhere, so let’s make life easy.”

Plus, a few months ago, I spent more hours than I care to admit recording the damn thing to audio. I created a custom jingle with sound effects (thanks, Pixabay), then used Audacity to record, put the audio through Auphonic to clean it up, and used GarageBand to splice it all together and edit it.

Because it was my first-ever recording or using any of these tools, it probably took me 20 hours (or more).

To date, it has had fewer than 100 listens.

So, to do the essay justice, honour the hours spent listening to my own voice (which to me, sounds unbearably baritone), I decided to re-release it to my current list.

And here are the stats of the same essay landing on Substack 15 months apart.

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Essay originally posted April, 2025. Re-released with audio.

We’ve all had a drive-by mirror moment that makes us gasp in horror.

A napkin dispenser tooth check that forces us to toss our lipstick.

An oily puddle that shortens, widens, and humbles.

But nothing compares to a merciless photo.

A bad photo is zoomable, hard evidence that we are not as imagined. Of course, there are one-offs, where angles and lighting collide in a tornado of unflattery. But how can we explain away an entire series of unfortunate events?

We’re talking pictures so dreadful that we’re receiving apology texts.

Photos so horrible that gay men are asserting, “They did you dirty, sis”.

Still frames that make you feel out of body, where the only plausible explanation is that you’ve suffered a terrible accident.

That somehow, you were comatose for three decades.

For years, while your family and friends were living their lives, you lay limp in a hospital bed. You were read bedtime stories by volunteer “book buddies” with checkered pasts. You were hooked up to beeping machines and bathed with a semi-dry loofah.

While determination and technology kept you alive, time marched on.

Then miraculously, after seven presidencies, your soft body awakened. You began to regain dexterity, cognitive function, and a desire for sauvignon blanc.

By the grace of god and with the help of a close-talking, frizzy-haired rehab lady, you were walking again. Hell, you were talking again!

It was almost like this tragic accident never happened. Almost. Almost—except for one thing: while you lay locked to your hospital bed, your Scottish skin did you no favours. Over the years, you continued to age…rapidly.

One would’ve thought that zero sunlight, no mortgage stress, and skipping the 87th season of Love is Blind would’ve preserved your face. But it didn’t.

Apparently, there was no BOTOX® or La Mer in the “trip and fall” unit.

Unbeknownst to you, you became senior overnight. Aging is the receipt of life’s cruelty.

Once you’re released from hospital, a dear friend invites you to their anniversary party. You're chuffed. It’s an opportunity to plug back into the life you remember.

Plus, you can show off your working legs to friends who moved to Kitchener-Waterloo.

Your hospital room was in downtown Toronto. So, technically, you never left the city. You weren’t part of the suburban exodus that went searching for lawns and full-height basements.

You remained a downtown girlie.

At the party, you’re in your element.

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You’re greeted by familiar faces you once shared red solo cups with. You see some of the children-turned-young-adults you’d nearly forgotten about (oopsie!).

Most importantly, you’re reunited with your closest gals.

Your friends look beautiful. They’re exactly as remembered.

Wrongfully, you assume the same for yourself.

From the far corner, someone calls out for a group photo. You gather around and squeeze in tightly. The camera snaps and snaps again. You smile, happy to preserve this moment exactly as it is.

Once you’re back home, your phone pings. You see a photo album has been shared in the State Street Galz group chat.

When you open the first photo, you’re in disbelief.

You click the next picture. Then, the next.

Bravely, you zoom in on your hands.

All of a sudden, you feel faint. Your knees buckle. Your phone slips through loose fingers as you fall to the floor.

You’ve become your own Great Aunt.

As every photo indicates, you’ve secured Rexall’s 55+ senior discount. You’ve been carrying Werther’s in your purse. You’ve penned dozens of open letters to Mark Zuckerberg to keep your Facebook posts private!

The whole 30-year coma thing? It probably never happened.

You invented the story as a defence mechanism—a way to explain how baby blue pleated plants and a graphic blouse could go so horribly wrong.

How your age-appropriate face could contort into something so elderly.

How your hands could reveal so many veins that your nurse-sister called them “medically enviable”.

While years may not have been stolen from you, you’ve been visited by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. Without the help of a gimmicky aging app, you have a window into how you’ll look at your daughter’s retirement party.

In some ways, the photos are a second lease on life.

While they’re a blaring reminder that time marches on, with a healthy skin routine and alkaline water, it may be possible to squeeze in a few more years of tangential youth.

There is still time before there’s no more time.

And so, you tuck your phone away.

No one wants to say it.

I don’t want to say it.

But here it is: summer is an attention-grabby bitch.

Did the screen catch on fire?

Will a mob of perineum sunnists cancel me?

Have my stripes as a former houseboat liveaboard been revoked?

As someone from a place where two-thirds of the year is atrocious, summer is a bit of a celebrity.

And believe me, she knows it.

We talk about her well before she arrives and long after she leaves.

We roll out special furniture, plant things we know will die, and dazzle her with an action-packed itinerary.

This week, I bought a new tent.

I already have a tent, but I can’t speak to polyester-and-pole condition. And after the year we’ve had, I refuse to be caught with my pants down—not unless it’s after dark, in an 80-degree lake!

As someone who brought a wheelie suitcase on a three-day portaging trip, I do not need multiple tents.

But here I am, a good Canadian, prepping for the arrival of our much-anticipated guest.

And don’t get me wrong, I love summer. Mostly.

Every nice day, I go out for a “sun bake.” I lie on a patio cushion until I grow faint and perspiration drips from my loins. My leathered chest, arriving two decades ahead of schedule, is a permanent marker of my commitment to the cause.

I also own those backpack beach chairs.

I have enough Coleman coolers to erect an insulated totem pole.

I wear Crocs with jibbits (or as I call them, gizzy-bits).

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However, there’s pressure in hosting our celebutant.

There can be something strangely melancholy about a string of blue skies. I think it’s because bad weather offers us places to hide.

We are allowed to climb in then claw our way back out.

We are permitted to cozy under blankets and let our minds wander.

We are satisfied when, between the rise and fall of the sun, we just make a soup.

But summer takes away our hiding places. She demands more of us.

She’s boisterous, and more often than not, feels out of reach.

She has a way of making us feel like we’re doing it all wrong.

As kids, summer felt infinite.

We’d swim in chilly lakes and go to amusement parks.

We’d call on friends and scream-sing Sheryl Crow inside kleenex-box-shaped cars.

We’d crunch Sun-in through our hair and compare birthmarks on trampolines.

The days and weeks of summer stretched on, and by the time September rolled around, we were different people.

As adults, summer is 13 weekends. Thirteen summer Saturdays, tumbleweeding through nostalgic hope, and punctuated somewhere between responsibility and the occasional Fudgesicle.

Weekend 1: Canada Day

Weekend 2: Music Festival

Weekend 5: Drywall

Weekend 6: Kitchen Install

Weekend 8: Wedding

Weekend 9: Camping

Weekend 11: Go out East

Summer firmly encourages us to make the most of her precious window.

And undoubtedly, things fall by the wayside. Writing becomes inconsistent. Building slows down. Plans start to overlap. Then, suddenly it’s August, and your only routine is that there is no routine, but there will be mojitos!

A change of pace is often welcomed, but it’s just that I like who I’m becoming. And it all feels so precarious.

If winter is where we work, summer is where we accidentally live. She strongarms us into enjoying for enjoyment’s sake, in ultraviolet 3D.

But the reality is, summer isn’t faster or slower than the rest of the year. She just has a penchant for making us feel guilty.

We spend all winter saying, “Fuck, I can’t wait for summer.”

Then summer arrives, and we feel like we should be somewhere else. As though we should be using this time to become the fantasy versions of ourselves we spent our holed-up indoor months conjuring.

And this isn’t fair.

It’s not fair for the days we brushed snow off our cars, worked overtime, or were so depleted we invested in red light therapy.

So instead of giving in and feeling bad about what we should or should not be doing, why don’t we let summer in slowly?

Let’s enjoy her quietly on a Tuesday, when even she has grown a bit tired.

I’m not someone who ever knows what they’re writing about.

When I put headphones in to start drafting, I may have a loose idea, or something that has been haunting me, but that’s about it. There are no bullet points or outlines, just an openness to see where things go. I used to think this was problematic and unproductive.

Now, I see it as the magic.

Elizabeth Gilbert talked on a podcast about writing and the aliveness of ideas. This is the premise behind Big Magic, which I read (and then reread) a couple of years ago with great interest.

Anyways, on an episode of The Telepathy Tapes, an insane, must-listen podcast on the telepathic abilities of non-verbal autistic individuals, Elizabeth Gilbert is a guest. Her episode is on the consciousness of creativity and is basically an abbreviated, conversational version of Big Magic.

She talks about how ideas are alive and that they choose us (cool, right?).

But for me, the clincher is this: Gilbert likes to leave ideas a bit restless.

Instead of drawing out a writing session, she purposefully stops writing midway through a sentence. The theory, as I recall (and forgive me for my notoriously poor paraphrasing skills), is that by stopping our writing abruptly, the aliveness stays percolating.

Like teens in a mall parking lot, the energy behind the words stays loitering, waiting to be released.

When we put a nice little bow around a writing session, we can lose steam. I’ve felt this before, where ending on a high note creates more intimidation for the next day’s work.

I like the idea of ideas being alive. It feels like it alleviates some of the responsibility and labour around writing. Maybe I’m willing to buy into any excuse to “do less,” but the permission (nay, encouragement) to step away and go eat bonbons before continuing a piece jives with me.

And so, I’ve been trying to do this more with my writing. I arrive not knowing where a piece will take me, let myself get carried out to sea for a bit, then before I get too tired or my foot cramps up, I return to shore for some watermelon and libations.

My mantra as of late is to write more and struggle less while doing it.

With that, I don’t mean to brag, but my latest piece, I Thought Adults Knew Everything, revealed itself with little torture. It flowed pretty seamlessly, and instead of rewrites, I mostly trimmed out the unnecessary.

As someone who is drawn to the “all that and a bag of potato chips” or “everything and the kitchen sink” style of writing, I’m trying to exercise restraint. I’m learning to let go of lines that I like to honour the piece as a whole.

Often, an entire buffet isn’t as satisfying as one nicely plated meal.

I’m trying to serve one cohesive, well-portioned plate rather than offer chicken soo-guy, prime rib, and lemon meringue pie all at once.

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I remember being in Grade 3 and feeling like I knew everything.

By this point, I’d never moved houses, been on a plane, or changed schools.

Every morning, I rode the bus to my tiny elementary. All of the kids were local, from families who worked at the post office, grocery stores, or carpet barn.

I still recall the name of a student, James, who was called for attendance on the first day of class. He never ended up in our homeroom because he was dying. That was the first time I heard of leukemia.

A few years later, another kid, Sammy, who I sat beside on the bus, drowned in a pool on a family vacation.

Another time, a group of girls ran into a hornet’s nest in the schoolyard. They got stung so many times that one of them ended up in hospital.

Going to the hospital sounded exciting. I was naive to the cloud of worst-days-ever that hangs over every wing. I was envious of those who broke their arms and came to class with a hunk of plaster to sign.

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At some point during Grade 3, I asked my Mom if I could skip the grade.

I had already learned all there was to learn.

Math? I memorized the times tables!

Spelling? I knew every word!

Music? I could play “Mary Had a Little Lamb”!

I decided that I knew everything. And this was very disappointing.

What a pity that no more new ideas could slide across my desk!

I figured I’d crossed over into what it must be like to be an adult. Adults know everything.

I didn’t end up skipping a grade.

It wasn’t long before fractions and verb conjugation (en français) entered the picture. I also got invited to train early for my “pen license” which was a worthy prize. I’d get to leave the lowly pencil-users, whose penmanship made them unworthy of ink, in my wake.

In a way that feels inconceivable, I think back on this slice where I thought I’d reached the ceiling on knowledge. That somehow, I’d hit the finite wall of all there was to know.

This feeling, unique to a couple of days in Grade 3, is the only time I’ve ever felt like I had all the pieces.

Funnily enough, the older I get, the more I realize how little I know.

Each year seems to reveal another room behind the room. A yellow wallpapered living room leads into a wall-to-wall walnut library, then into a moody velvet parlour, then down a creaky staircase into a cobwebbed cellar.

In Grade 3, I imagined adulthood a lot more linearly.

We’d finish school, get glossy jobs, strike book deals, then spend the rest of our lives building families and dispensing wisdom next to a lake somewhere.

Instead, adulthood feels like venturing deeper into the house. Outgrowing rooms. Finding trap doors. Leaving convenience behind for space.

For that brief, all-knowing slice of Grade 3, I had maxed out on everything at my limited disposal.

Those of us in the middle, stuck somewhere between demo and reno, are aware of too much.

We know that good-on-paper can eat away.

We know about sacrifice.

We know that people can get sick.

And still, we’ve chosen to trade in well-appointed rooms for basements.

We are acutely aware of the possibility for beauty and disaster, and that both are attached to a timeline we, unfortunately, are not privy to.

We only get one chance to explore, overhaul, and design a life that is “us”.

There are entire countries, hobbies, and versions of ourselves that we’ll never get to try on.

We will never get to all of the doors, and now, we know better than to try.

In Grade 3, my world hadn’t yet been cracked open.

I didn’t understand the empty desk, the burden of a plaster trophy, or that limitlessness was just around the corner.

In Grade 3, I was overwhelmed by the belief that there was nowhere left to go.

Today, I am struck by the opposite.

I’ve shut countless doors in favour of wandering the halls.

I enter rooms, but I’m afraid to unpack more than a toiletry bag.

I want to put up art, find the perfect wool rug, and fill each corner with tchotchkes. But I know that choosing one room means leaving another unexplored. And that every yes becomes a thousand quiet nos.

The house is bigger than I’ll ever have time to see.

As a kid, I mistook a small world for a complete one.

Now, I know better. And maybe that’s what adulthood actually is.

It’s not wandering the halls forever, but learning how to be happy with all of the doors you’ll never open.

Then it’s choosing a room anyway, and finally hanging some fucking art.

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One of my favourite things about writing is thinking we have nothing to say, sitting down, and surprising ourselves. Often, things just flow. Like turning on a cottage tap, expecting nothing, then needing to compliment the host on their fine water pressure.

I want you to know, dear reader, that this is exactly how this post is starting.

I am typing on this page with zero idea what’s going to come out.

I have a few topics I’m avoiding, but nothing in my “to write” pipeline.

I believe that going in with a plan is beneficial. It’s grounding. It alleviates pressure.

But this is only in theory.

I, for one, am voluntarily planless.

When I’ve managed content teams, the onus fell on me to provide the article outline for writers to fill in.

I found this skeleton work to be soul-sucking and…bone-crushing (forgive me).

Coming up with an outline for technical stuff works, but the type of writing I love is more of an impromptu shake out of the soul. We can’t overplan it; we just create the right conditions, get over ourselves, and start walking.

A couple of years ago, when I was drafting my 70,000-word essay collection, I thought I needed more structure to be successful.

I’ve always assumed that what works for other people is probably right and my way is wrong or, at best, risky.

I’m not sure where demoting my nonroutine approach stems from.

Is it a result of growing up a 90’s girl?

Taking boomer men too seriously?

An eagerness to please?

A history of being rewarded for following the rules?

Not knowing what the fuck I’m doing without borrowed structure?

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Without something guiding me to the next thing, whether from myself or some external body, there’s a bottomless unknown. As someone who has learned to play the game successfully but no longer wishes to, self-trust takes a while to regain.

It’s something we’re born with, and something we lose along the way.

I want to believe this period of uncertainty will amount to something pointed. And so, I am actively trying to override the parts of my brain that think other people know best, and that their winning models should become my own.

But for starters, my personality type is the kind that genuinely forgot to file taxes. It’s the kind that doesn’t do the same thing, in the same way twice. It’s also the kind that, after living in a house for two years, had rarely made garbage day.

Last week, with my husband at work and me here to tend to art and home, I thought:

I am going to make garbage day! Won’t that be a nice normie win?

I opened our patio-cushion-storage-box-turned-garbage-room and counted seven torn and tattered garbage bags. An animal had gotten in, exposing coffee grounds, chicken bones, and egg shells.

I put on gloves, rebagged the fallen soldiers, and put them all out on the curb.

With smug satisfaction, I headed into town, grinning at garbage mountain as I pulled out.

Upon return, I found our heap of black plastic still very much summitable. Adorned on the foothills was a passive-aggressive sticker that read: “2 bags max per household.”

Don’t these garbage keepers realize that our disorganization should grant us indefinite volume immunity?

If anything, we’re owed retroactive credits!

The combined weight of our uncollected garbage could rival the body mass lost in the Bravoverse or Greater Los Angeles area to Ozempic.

Dejected, I gathered the garbage bags, put them in the back of my husband’s truck, and closed the lid.

The next day, he was off to a week-long company retreat. With no time to drive the opposite direction to the dump, I mapped one en route.

Unsurprisingly, the garbage attended the company off-site as well.

My husband drove five hours with overflowing bags of banana peels, rib sludge, and hair drain slime. Like a psychopath concealing a dead body in their trunk, he parked far out of range and avoided driving anyone from his work.

Once home, we waited another three days before going to the dump.

When we got there, I sat in the passenger seat while Kevin unloaded our flatbed of sin.

As he discarded our unthinkables, an SUV backed in beside us.

A husband and wife emerged from their car, wearing matching cargo pants with t-shirts tucked in. They had on ballcaps and gloves.

They hit the button of their trunk, and began unloading small bundles of taped-up carpet. Each pinwheel of carpet was no greater than a submarine sandwich in diameter.

Once they were rid of their perfect coils, they moved on to wood trim. The husband held out his arms while she loaded him up with a couple of twigs, also taped tightly.

The wood pile, if set on fire, couldn’t provide warmth to a family of hamsters for more than 90 seconds.

I found this couple infuriating.

In an assessment I’m not proud of, I referred to them as “Twin dweebs who probably talked about their ‘Big Construction Day’ to family, friends, and church groups all month long!”

These people have never forgotten garbage day.

They don’t let chicken sludge marinate in the back of a Toyota Tacoma.

They have grass-stained sneakers only for lawn-cutting, and probably plan a cruise for their anniversary every third year.

They leave nothing to chance or uncertainty.

I understand the mental decluttering systems offer. I also crave rhythm, routine, and order.

But the second something starts to resemble a pair of perfectly pressed cargo pants for “Big Construction Day”, I want to light it all on fire and flee.

We need people like the carpet couple. They uphold civilization.

Meanwhile, people like me spend half our lives trying to build systems, and the other half trying to escape them.

Maybe that’s the trade-off.

Some people move through life with perfectly taped bundles of certainty.

Others marinate in a proprietary blend of chicken sludge chaos until they ripen.

Join us for weekly, often funny essays about our “what’s next” becoming.

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There are a lot of things I love about writing, but getting started isn’t one.

I suffer from a “you’re only as good as your last meal” mentality. This adds unnecessary pressure between hitting publish and drafting the next thing.

On top of being toxic, this fear is unfounded. I genuinely believe that the more we write, the better we get.

Sure, some early editions may outperform contemporaries, but generally, barring a newly formed four-bourbon, deep-fried chicken bucket writing ritual, the arc is upward.

With this logic, we should have nothing to fear when it comes to writing anew.

We should welcome the blinking cursor against a plain doc.

We should hand over the keys to our literary becoming and enjoy the ride.

But logic isn’t feeling, and feeling includes a medley of past shortcomings and public bombs.

Psyching ourselves up to make art is justifiable. But it also creates a barrier to entry that I’d like to remove.

Getting started on my latest piece, Then, Everyone Died, felt no different.

Amazingly, despite the premature death of a family dog, the passing of my husband’s Oma on the same night, and flying to Germany for the funeral—all in one week—the devil on my shoulder suggested I probably had nothing to say!

“Plus, no one likes talk of death!”, I thought with eyebrows scrunched.

And then, I got over myself and started writing.

Writing this particular piece reacquainted me with one of the things I love most about writing: once we lock in, magic happens, and we get to be surprised by where it goes. As we write, part of us becomes the reader too, observing our own reactions and discovering how we actually feel.

I had most of the draft in place after a couple of mornings. The real work happened later, inside Substack, when the piece went from free-flow to finished.

That’s where I figured out how to merge the family dog and Oma. As I was writing, I was convinced these two stories would have to live separately. I spent a hefty number of words at the beginning on the “dog” end of grief, and didn’t want Oma’s transition to feel light or less significant.

But with an ending that captured the theme, I think it felt balanced. I was able to stitch them together into one connective piece about, well, connection.

Here are the final edits I made, along with the ending I drafted on Substack:

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A week ago, it was my birthday. Then, everyone died.

It started with a missed call. And a second.

I called my Mom back, who, through uncharacteristic tears, said to “hang on a sec” while she stepped outside. She was with my 97-year-old grandmother, whom we must mask all emotion from or fall victim to an excruciating line of questioning.

“Who’s sick?”

“What’s their doctor’s name?”

“Were they the ones that bought the old Hutchsinson farm on the 9th Line?”

On the phone, my Mom explained that Gus, their blimp-shaped Boston terrier, was about to die.

He was only eight and lived like a king. Or more accurately, like a former child star that peaked too early and spent his adult years binge-eating and sleeping the day away.

Note: Gus was, technically, a movie star. He appeared in Riot Girl, a 2019 feature film with a 4.5/10 IMDB score. He earned $300 for his minor yet integral role.

Gus is my dog’s littermate and polar opposite. Dewey rides hard, with a lower deck of missing teeth, a cauliflower ear, and a bulgedy-eye passion for Chuckit.

I always said that Gus, like someone in a medically induced coma, would live forever.

From day one, Gus’ energetic output hardly registered among the living. He was like a soft-handed developer who’d never seen the sun. He was well-preserved and untarnished, with a tank that never dipped below the three-quarter line.

I was in disbelief.

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A few days earlier, Gus had been to the vet for a lump in his neck. The tests revealed advanced-stage lymphoma. I skimmed Reddit threads and cited miracles of dogs in three-year remissions. Naively, and perhaps a trait of the youngest-born, I thought we had a few good weeks, or even months left.

But here we were, my Mom’s voice cracking through the phone, saying that Gus was about to die. He’d been throwing up blood, had laboured breathing, and was too weak to stand.

The vet was coming in a couple of hours to put him down.

When she broke the news, I didn’t cry. I come from a family of non-cryers, and feel a duty to hold it together, even if it means dropping a deflective joke or coming across as indifferent.

I don’t like the overexposure of crying. Plus, once I start, I can’t stop.

I have a distinct memory of being five or six, watching The Fox and the Hound, and feeling tears well up. Instead of allowing myself to cry in the comfort of the living room, I went to the bathroom, sat on the toilet, and cried alone. Once composed, I reemerged to watch the final scenes with feigned unaffectedness.

Initially, I didn’t offer to drive the hour and a half to be there for Gus’ end. I had appointments in another city, and truthfully, I didn’t want to see Gus die. When we don’t see, we get to draw from our imagination. I wanted to draw a soft passing where life seamlessly fades into death.

As people who treat their dogs as seat-at-the-table family members with nicknames, rolodexes of greatest hits stories, and dinner time rituals that include “one dollop of sour cream on the side, not touching the kibbles”, we take the loss of our dogs hard.

To this day, with some level of guilt, the premature death of the first dog I got living on my own remains the most grief-stricken I’ve ever felt.

When I got the call that he died in his sleep, I was sleeping in a bunk bed at a Nashville hostel. I nearly rolled onto the floor. I cried so much my eyes swelled shut.

I remember looking around at happy people in cowboy boots, thinking, “Don’t they know what’s happened?”

I thought I’d never recover. My life got filed into a “before” and “after”. “After” was knowing that bad, unexplainable things can happen. One night, you can be eating Hattie B’s fried chicken, and by morning, this thing that you loved more than anything can be dead.

Admittedly, I see the privilege of this scenario. For my deepest marring of grief to be from a dog is entry-level.

However, it remains my clearest window into how inconceivable life after can feel.

While almost a decade ago, it still steals my breath.

It has made me clench at missed calls.

It has made me enter dark rooms to watch the rise and fall of breath.

It has made me redraw the depths of worsts imaginable.

But today, Gus, the brother of the dog that filled the void of my biggest loss, was going to die. And for my parents, and for him, I had to bear witness.

I got to the farm just ahead of the vet. Gus lay outside on his favourite blanket—a tacky, synthetic fleece with words like “believe” and “dream” written across it. As I walked over to him, he lay still. His eyes opened and closed heavily, and his breathing was choppy.

It’s surreal knowing that the life of another is about to end. That once the next vehicle drives down the long, gravel lane, we’ll be one less family member.

Until then, I sat next to him, patting his soft fur, before offering him a final piece of cheese.

“This will be the last thing he ever eats,” I thought. He didn’t eat it.

When the vet pulled in, I backed away. I didn’t want to be part of the final scene. I planned to go inside and re-emerge with feigned composure. But my parents and sister stayed close, so I held vigil.

A few minutes later, Gus was gone. We all cried together in private.

It’s strange, the way that grief behaves.

It doesn’t wait until you’ve processed one loss before introducing another. Perhaps grief is designed this way, stacked together like car dealerships on the edge of town.

That night, Kevin’s beloved Oma died.

She lived in a small village in Northern Germany and was a relic from another time.

When she spoke, everyone listened.

When she cooked, everyone ate.

When she joked, everyone laughed.

She had a not-to-be-messed-with attitude that felt anchoring and safe. There was nothing flippant or nonsensical about her.

She was the village bookkeeper, sharp as a tack. She remembered everyone’s name and birthday.

She fed her family by growing her own food and slaughtering their pigs. Kevin recounted seeing blood speckled across her oversized lenses. Her hands were the size of a baseball glove.

After the first family in the village got a TV and didn’t let anyone come over and watch it, she took out her first and only loan to buy one. Every evening, all the neighbourhood kids would pile into her tiny living room to watch whatever was on.

Her door was forever open.

She spoke German and Plaudietsch, sharing anecdotes and one-liners that cracked every room. Her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren stayed close, marvelling at her comedic timing.

Whenever we got to visit, she’d hug Kevin so tightly, she’d lift his 6-foot-three frame off the ground. She always remarked how much Kevin’s smile reminded her of her Dad. Our wedding photo sat close to her command center, a recliner and fold-out table next to the TV.

She loved watching detective shows, soccer, and hockey—just for the fights.

Recently, I came up with the nickname Bro-ma, but never got the chance to roll it out.

For Kevin, this call, the one where his Oma was dead, was his great fear. And now, it had happened.

Without hesitation, we flew to Germany for her funeral. I was afraid of how sad everyone would be. She was everyone’s favourite person, and the final connection to a world that no longer exists.

At the funeral, there were many tears. For me, hearing anyone’s long and wonderful life get reduced to a highlight reel always feels grossly deficient. But that wasn’t what lingered. It was the connection.

The morning of her funeral, everyone mentioned a large circle in the sky. It was a perfectly drawn white contrail.

Despite arriving from different villages and directions, we had all seen it.

I don’t know what happens after death.

But for a moment, we stood there together, eyes wide, looking at the same thing: a full circle somewhere between us and whatever happens next.

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For many, the New Year promises an opportunity for a fresh start. Or at the very least, a cheese and booze detox.

For others, September’s back-to-school energy breathes new life. It makes us want to put ourselves out there again.

For me, taking honest stock is captured across a holy trinity: the New Year, September, and my birthday.

Conveniently, this checkpoint trifecta happens to be spaced four months apart. And without fail, each one brings a pause, an internal audit, and the inevitable wince that I’m not further ahead.

It’s about to be my 36th birthday.

This means I’m one year closer to needing a hip replacement. More justified in being asked, “Are your parents still living?” by a 60-year-old woman who deemed me a peer. A little less likely to put on “mom jeans” as a non-mom and have them not just read as “mom,” if you will.

I don’t think I’m alone when I say that the last year has been unusual.

For good and bad, it’s been unpredictable and uproarious.

I think I can represent the collective when I say, we’re tired.

We’re tired of not knowing if we’ll get jobs again.
We’re tired of not knowing if our neighbours will fall in love with bots.
We’re tired of not knowing if the world is gonna blow.
We’re tired of not having the kind of community we had growing up.
We’re tired of having zero attention spans.

Somehow, we’ve gone embarrassingly astray in our relentless pursuit of more.

We bought the McMansions, but the cheap laminate cost too much to replace.

We used our credit cards for the vacations, but we were too stressed to enjoy them.

We posted perfectly staged dinner tables, but had nothing to say when it came time to eat.

The reflection of the last year, my 35th year, is this: it’s time to cut the shit.

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To offset the estrangement, singed retinas, and gluttonous bloat, we need to get back to basics.

Perhaps these tradwife-adjacent, peasant-skirted weirdos have a point: less is more.

If we step off the treadmill, acknowledge the cataclysmic shift, and play with some wild-ferment yeast, we might discover that we already have everything we need.

We’ve proven ourselves. We played the game. None of it made us happier.

In the last year, I wrapped up ever working for anyone else. After 13 years in tech, juggling contract clients by night, gut-renovating three properties, trying to write, and be a good friend and partner, I let a lot go. I got laid off, dropped clients, sold things, and created space.

It took months—hell, almost my entire 35th year—to arrive here.

So, with 36 in the queue ready to drop, I want this year to be guided by the small and sweet. As I wrote in my New Year post, the antidote to uncertainty is to chip away. It’s not about exhaustive big swings, but righting our ships incrementally.

In honour of my birthday, and our theme of lightening the load, here are 20 small things to look forward to this year:

1. Outdoor swimming: Grab your finest aquatic garb, full-body saturation will soon be upon us! Pools, lakes, and oceans. We don’t do ponds, and rivers are the poor man’s lake (everyone knows it). Taking the literal plunge is an unmatched summer treat, and we’re ready for sweet release.

2. Bonfires: Whether it’s because I ranked in 23andMe’s 99th percentile for “most neanderthal”, I can’t be sure. Regardless, we can all agree that fire is magic. Sitting around a bonfire bonds us. It’s a truth serum that forces us to drop walls and shed skin.

3. Thrifting gems to unearth: Listen, not everyone is gifted at the thrifted. Long before thrifting haul videos made my sport popular, you could find me a siftin’. In high school, I used a KitKat lunchbox as a purse. This year, I got a velvet, fur-trimmed Christmas gown for $1. I also acquired a deceased ballerina’s glove collection (hey, if the glove fits).

4. Getting better at things: Nary a year goes by that we get worse at stuff. Sure, there are shutdown series, bad stretches, and several consecutive months we’d rather forget, but overall, learning and getting better remain constant. That’s life.

5. Shutting down some assholes: There are times when we bite our tongue, weighing the pros and cons of telling someone deserving off. After all, we’re adults with self-control! We’re better than that! Why get worked up for nothing? While I mostly air in this direction, there is a duty I now feel as a fully-formed adult, to let line-crossing creeps know that I see them, and they suck.

6. Fun shows: People are out there making some good shit, and this year, we’re gonna get to see some of it. Music, comedy, one-woman shows, photography, painting, jumping on one foot playing a trombone. Why don’t we let ourselves get taken away? Let’s go.

7. Roadtrips: Waking up at the crack of dawn, coffees loaded, a down-filled feather throw pillow in the front seat (don’t knock it till you try it). There’s nothing quite like hitting the pavement early and eating a bag of gas station cheese curds before noon. Destination unknown.

8. More good writing: The more we write, the better we get. Over the next year, if we protect a few minutes a day, we’ll have our own shabbily painted, little library to wedge into our lawn for neighbours and passersbys to pick from (or not).

9. Make some money: Not to be uncouth, suddenly capitalistic, or to bait-switch this thing into something it is not, but this year will bring shillings (for all of us). And while the focus is on small realness, there is ease and exhalation with being above water and on the board. I haven’t been for a while, so here’s to getting back in the green.

10. Putting into print: There’s a shift towards the tangible. A thing that we can hold in our hands. Wouldn’t it be cool to print a book, a zine, or a Substack collection that gets shoved into bookbags, stained with drool, and leafed through on trains somewhere?

11. Pet naps: As a childless adult, nothing is cuter than your pet falling asleep on you. We have more of this to look forward to. That’s all.

12. New things to eat: I love cooking, and I love eating. The next few months promise both. We’ll try new recipes, burn a few things, and freestyle wilting fridge items into a questionable medley. We’ll also eat some memorable dishes that make life worth living.

13. Redeem airplane points: Before you get the wrong picture, let it be known that I’m not a points collector or couponer. I wish I could be that organized. The only thing I passively accrue are airplane points (Aeroplan, if you must know). And every year, we bank them for an outlandish one-way business class flight with lay-flat seats. Highly recommend.

14. Garden basil: If pesto isn’t one of your favourite foods, I can respect our differences, but I don’t like it. If you don’t love basil, I will clock this fact and stash it into a folder of oddities about you. But beyond that, growing your own herbs is a joy and gift that keeps on giving (until frost).

15. Touching toes: As someone who was born with the flexibility of a mostly wheelchair-bound geriatric, a strange shift is happening. Suddenly, I’m able to bend over and reach into the general vicinity of my toes. To many, this is a marker of average wellness. To me, it’s almost mystical. Why now? Why suddenly me? Is this self-employment? Stay tuned.

16. Not working for anyone I don’t want to work with: Being in an environment that could, at any moment, start branding employees with pet names adjacent to “family” never sat right. There’s a particular confidence in stepping out and breaking the chain. Designing our own day is a privilege that hits different, and like getting your first dishwasher or king-size bed, there’s no going back.

17. Hosting events: Maybe it’s the growing stemware collection or the adorable glass olive martini picks I thrifted for $1, but I feel called to host. Whether it’s new or old friends for dinner, or more community events, I plan to follow this and see where it goes. If at my place, we’re on septic, so please, no unnecessary flushing!

18. Saying “no”: Historically, in a way that doesn’t suit my personality, I’ve been bad at saying no. I agree to too much, string things along, and feel guilty for not showing up. But stretching ourselves shouldn’t come at our own expense. Plus, turning what’s inside us into something real requires great attention.

19. Moving into our house: We gutted an 1890’s townhouse down to the gills. Sadly, we didn’t find gold or even an opium pipe behind the walls. It’s been a mountain of coordination and hemorrhage of borrowed funds. This year, we’re going to move in. While not exactly part of this living “small mantra”, being close to family and friends will make way for stackable moments, like wine nights, patio hangs, and pizza nights.

20. Saying “yes”: Part of this “doing it my way” era means I haven’t left much opportunity for shit I don’t wanna do, but probably should. And this isn’t totally right either. Sometimes going out when we’d rather be in pyjamas, showing up at the event alone, and signing up for the weird workshop are what we need. Mallard feather habadashery intensive, anyone?

When I set out to write this, I thought, “I’m turning 36, so the list will be 36 small things, of course!“ Then I got to number 8 or 9 and realized: holy fuck, 36 is a lot of items.

36 is not light and airy.

36 is not a cute, lean 20-something. It’s a full 30-something who has seen some shit and should not be underestimated.

So, to save us both, I tightened the list to a cool, skimmable 20.

Why? Because sometimes less is more.

Anne Lamont, whom many of us admire for Bird by Bird, teamed up with her husband, Neal Allen, a writer and life coach (beige flag), to author Good Writing: 36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences.

Allen, a decades-long published author, compiled 36 rules he uses when editing. He turned them into a book and asked Anne Lamott to help…edit. Instead of just editing, she came in to save the project from becoming a snore by adding her take on each rule (with all her senior dreadlocked quirkiness).

Full disclosure: I have not read the book.

What I have done is listen to Lamott and Allen talk through the rules on Rick Rubin’s podcast, Tetragrammaton. Twice. And the episode is a breezy two hours and twenty-two minutes long, so one could argue I’m as committed as a reality TV showmance.

The first time I listened, I was in a creepy castle-turned-hotel in Bairrada, a region of Portugal known for sparkling wine and suckling pig (I didn’t get any because pig skin is too thick and reminds me of a mummy!).

Now, a double bed for two is a challenge at the best of times, but when the mattress feels original to the monarchy, let’s just say nobody caught a wink.

On my re-listen, I had the luxury of modern Tempur-Pedics and found the rules even more useful.

I also noticed how many of the rules I break, including a few I’d never really considered. For example: always stick with “said” in dialogue instead of trying to be cute with a “muttered” or “whispered.” Their argument is that anything but “said” cheapens the writing.

“I can see that,” I contemplated with my eye half-cocked and my fly undone.

Around the second listen, I had just published my essay Why Do I Feel Better There? Naturally, I started mentally running it through the 36.

There are things Patron Saint Anne of Bird by Bird would not approve of.

These rules feel less like technical grammar and more like fine wine refinement.

Here are the 36 ways to improve your sentences, according to Anne Lamott and Neal Allen:

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Every year, we spend a couple of weeks in Portugal.

Besides 23andMe indicating, then later retracting, that I’m 0.3% Iberian, we have no ties. Yet, we visit more than a favourite grandchild would their Portuguese granny.

For optics, we usually tack on another European destination. But our hearts belong to Porto.

Heading to the airport for this recent trip, a friend texted that Portugal was “our cottage”. In other words, that we go to Porto like an Ontarian might Muskoka, or a Missourian, The Ozarks.

Without fail, our days in Portugal are always among the most relaxed, joyful, and connected I feel all year. During this stretch, my husband and I walk more, talk more, and plot more.

Despite our bodies drowning in levels of bread, wine, and cheese that would incapacitate a lesser man, our synapses are firing.

We take photos of design ideas for house projects.

We discuss how to recreate no-fuss wine bars in Toronto.

We *mentally* found and take public several tech companies.

Over the years, we’ve ventured further and further from the touristic core of river boat cruises, roasting chestnuts, and caricature portraits. Instead, we settle into the ‘real’ neighbourhoods, opting for the cash-only holes that test our language skills and digestive tracts.

In these neighbourhoods, where we don’t know a soul, I feel alive. And looking around, so does everybody else.

Patio seats are shared among friends with lit cigarettes, laughter carries, and, almost cartoonishly, people break into song.

What I’m documenting is a romanticized vacation bubble. In Portugal, we’ve never done real tasks, filed a government document, or broken any limbs. Rosé coloured glasses are a factor.

Regardless, there is an aliveness and a livedinness that I rarely experience elsewhere.

I wonder if we, specifically those of us who inhabit places with six months of winter, live too inwardly.

Because of weather, culture, and six-lane highways, we don’t spill out into the streets.

We grab pint-sized coffees to go.

We sit in traffic.

We loaf inside our oversized homes.

In tight cities like Porto, life happens in public.

Espresso is drunk leaning against cafe counters.

Roads are built for walking, and stoops for sitting.

Houses are too small to hold it all in.

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As a visitor, we huff on the fumes of these rich internal lives lived out loud.

We absorb their energy in a way that feels familiar, and possibly even North American: passively.

Without any pressure to contribute, perform, or produce, we are granted entry into people and place with total abundance.

And we get fed.

This relaxed anonymity is not unique to Portugal. Like any place we visit for a few nights, we occupy a small bubble inside a suspended reality.

We don’t have to worry about finding parking, texting (or not texting) friends, or feeling like we’re missing out.

Everything unfolds effortlessly. There’s wonder in the ordinary. There’s freedom in having only ourselves and 10kg of curated clothing.

Somewhere between the baggage we leave behind and the small bag we bring, we are freer.

And this begs the question: why can’t we replicate this feeling at home?

By most measures, I am free.

Sure, I have two mortgages, including one gut-renovation on a house we overpaid for. I have dogs to care for, opaqueness around the future, and the occasional mystery rash. But I don’t have kids. I have no boss to report to. I am happy, healthy, and afloat.

On the scale of free, I’d score in the green.

And yet, between figuring out a business, growing my writing, and choosing goddamn countertop edges, I find myself stuck. Or worse: uncreative with my time.

I stay inside my oversized house.

I go to yoga but don’t talk to the other women.

I live two hours away from most of my family and friends.

Sometimes, I feel like I’m pissing it all away. But other times, I feel so grateful for this time and space, my stomach aches.

On the flight home, my body alerted to the “back to work” feeling. The Zoom calls, Coles Notes talk tracks, and feigning care whilst jetlagged and totally over it. My chest tightened. Then, I remembered that I don’t have a 9-5 to return to.

Freedom.

Right now, my job is to capture inspiration and turn it into something tangible. Preferably, something that pays the hydro bill.

This requires dismantling old patterns and rebuilding what I trust is possible.

But with this carte blanche, I worry that I won’t find “my thing” again. That I won’t make money again. That I won’t fit in without having to pretend again.

And this is the part that doesn’t quite line up.

Because in Portugal, I feel untethered in a way that feels expansive.

But at home, I feel untethered in a way that feels like a responsibility.

I’ve been granted precious space, and instead of filling it with Porto colour, I’m standing in it, waiting for something to happen. Or more accurately, waiting for me to make something happen.

Away, I get to borrow on the aliveness of others.

Here, I have to create it for myself.

No one is spilling it into the street for me.

I think I’m still carrying more than I need.

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This week, I posed a question about revisiting old writing:

I wanted to know if writers, once they’re 10,000-hours-deep stop wanting to edit earlier work. Whether these literary deities peacefully read old texts, puff on a cig and think, “Fuck, I’m good.” Or is it part human nature (and growth) to forever find adjustments?

Comments on that note ranged from: yes, forever cringing and wanting to edit old work, to: no, earlier writing is a preserved artifact of time/place and shan’t be touched, you optimizing pleb (this part was adlibbed).

I like and agree with both angles.

In content marketing, not essaying, best practice is to update published articles every six months. This helps the algo-Gods bless our digital fruits. But writing isn’t marketing, and in the traditional sense, perhaps a published work should be locked in (just like it would be in print).

Regardless of your preferred flavour, I’ve been revisiting my catalogue of essays. I’m thinking more and more about bundling them into a self-published—yes, printed—collection, and want to get a sense of whether my older posts pass today’s sniff test.

As I leaf(blow) through 75,000 words, the long and short is both yes and no.

While I stand by the premises and most of the copy, I want to take a red marker to all “finished” pieces. I find my earlier Substack stuff too show-boaty, blown out, and with inevitable errors.

Note: With remarkable frequency, I use the idiom, “Without further ado” in my writing. Only, I’ve spelt it, “Without further adieu” like a beret-wearing Parisian bidding farewell.

Revisting earlier works is where my latest essay, It’s Just You Thinking About You, stems from.

It’s a rewrite of a 2023 piece called Truth #1: You’re Not That Important. Yes, a rewrite—sue me!

The original essay had some great lines, but when I revisited it through the lens of Would I print this today?, it needed love and refinement.

And so, without further ado, here is the 2023 version with today’s edits overlaid.

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As a product of the 1990s, I grew up before helicopter parents descended.

When I was young, pregnant women still smoked.

Dads drank beer on country roads.

Grandparents kicked you out of the car for bickering.

While participation ribbons had hit the printing press, “you suck!” still echoed across classrooms, playgrounds, and dinner tables.

While we were largely removed from the abuses of our foremothers, trauma lurked just below the surface.

More akin to rescue dogs than golden doodles, our adults had love to give but weren’t afraid of showing their teeth.

Millennials are the gateway generation. We’re low-fi and high-fi. Then and now.

While we were spanked, we weren’t struck with a ruler.

While we were encouraged, we were reminded of where we came from.

While we were told to dream, we believed that Hollywood was for hussies and con artists.

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We caught the tail end of tough love parenting, but occasionally bathed in the softer wave.

Today’s kids are soaked in “to the moon and backs” and told that they’re special—as they should be. But balance is required.

The messaging that “everyone is a winner” and “it’s not you, it’s them” is dangerous.

Being protected rather than butting up against our limitations doesn’t create a safer world. It creates a fear of failure. It fertilizes anxiety because there’s too much life we can’t control.

Buffering honesty and failure also makes people fragile, unaccountable, and self-important.

So, for anyone who’s soaked up too much of today’s first-wave, institutional adoration, there’s something you need to hear. And this probably goes for most Gen Z’ers with parents who encouraged tone-deaf singing lessons.

I hope we’re all sitting down.

Despite what you may have been told, you are not that important.

Read it again.

Let it sink in.

Let it marinate overnight in a ziplock bag with Kraft Italian dressing.

Hearing the words, “You’re not that important,” probably has your hackles up. You may even disagree. And that’s fine.

I don’t like hearing “You’re not that important,” and I’m writing this damn thing.

But as they say, the truth shall set us free.

There is genuine freedom in understanding that we’re not the center of the universe.

Feeling the smallness of our place is a gift—an inconspicuous, brown paper-wrapped gift!

Granting ourselves anonymity makes putting ourselves out there, taking risks, and self-promoting manageable. Without it, the weight of our fuck-ups, cringiness, and shutdowns feel too public.

As someone who was born artfully self-involved, know that I say none of this flippantly. I’ve had to learn to override a default setting that suggests everything is about me.

But in doing so, I’ve gained back invaluable space to discover and build with less perceived consequence.

When you recognize that not everything is about you, you get away with more.

You don’t have to second-guess.

You avoid stepping in as the jazz-handed host at someone’s failing dinner party.

You understand that it’s not on you to make it great—or to fuck it all up.

When you no longer see yourself as Truman in everybody’s Truman Show, you get to explore without reservation.

After all, there are few things you can do or say that will imprint more than a temporary “ha-ha” (Nelson from The Simpsons, duh) into someone else’s consciousness.

So, when you do or say something stupid, know this: the recipients of your asshattery didn’t notice. Why? Because they’re too busy replaying their own stupidity!

To register as more than a blip on anyone’s radar—good or bad—you have to really go for it.

On the good end, you need to show up and leach your sweet authenticity into the beds of those around you.

On the bad end, you have to repeatedly suck, or go out in a blaze of glory as a controversial creep. This is not a dare.

A few problematic qualifiers that people will remember:

Being racist, homophobic or misogynistic

Venting political or social extremes

Piling on the underdog

Shit-talking someone’s mom (even if they just did)

Revealing that you never liked the TV show Friends to a group of 35-year-old women (do not recommend)

If you’re a good person, your not-very-important self will largely go unnoticed.

That is until you have something you want us all to see.

This should embolden you to confidently do your shadow work in plain sight.

Start to build things.

Hit publish.

Take the risk.

Show people before you’re ready.

Paint something so ugly you have to forget it outside in a rainstorm.

Recognizing your unimportance lowers the volume. It takes the sting out of things beyond our control. It also helps us become consciously unselfconscious.

When you’re not fixated on how you appear to others, you get to be more of yourself. Accepting that not everyone is thinking about you, nor clocking your every pigeon-toed movement, is liberating.

So, when you think that someone is thinking about you, know this: it’s just you thinking about you.

In the same capacity that you think about how you’re coming across, most people are doing the same. To confirm, thinking about themselves, not you.

Nothing is about you until it is.

In reality, only close friends, parents, and loved ones are registering what you’re up to. So, if you want to shape any narrative, or be seen in a certain light, start with being a better person to your inner circle. To them, you are the most important.

So, to the co-worker you blew milk breath onto…

To the group of “cool girls” you bombed in front of…

To the boss you nervously told about a hospitalization after a ‘foam party incident’...

Fuck it.

Your moment of cringe was as fleeting as pop culture’s body positivity movement.

And if your failures do get noticed, we can borrow from the youth of today: it’s not you, it’s them.

Unimportance is our freedom.

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Dearest Paid Subscriber,

First of all, thank you for your support, words of encouragement, and yes, financial contribution. I am genuinely chuffed to have you in my corner and have the privilege of knowing you. Alright, enough of that.

Part of being a paid subscriber to Substack is the promise of gated, exclusive content. This is a promise that I have never upheld… until now.

I would say the guilt has eaten me alive, but alas, I’m still here typing this while eating a date square (not my own arm).

Guilt or not, today that changes. I thought it could be interesting to offer a behind-the-scenes look at the road from final draft to published post. Amazingly, a lot happens between my “best and final” Google doc and copying it over to Substack to go live.

There’s something about the prospect of hitting publish—even if it’s just to a handful of people—that forces a different lens.

Suddenly, you picture a frenemy reading your post line by line to a room full of your detractors, and wonder: could this line get me cancelled? Is that even what that word means? And for the millionth time, how the hell do I use a semicolon?

In the same vein, over-editing can happen, and we must be careful not to smooth out all of the edges.

And so, without further ado, here’s what I changed between my last Google draft and the published version of Should I Have Kids?

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I am envious of people who know.

Those who know what they want to do for work, where they’ll live, and the things they would never compromise on. I respect conviction, steadfastness, and certainty.

I, however, am not this person.

For most of my life, I’ve operated with fluidity.

This isn’t to say that I’m directionless, but historically, I’ve run on some combination of hard work and “vibes”. I’ve gotten to where I am without much planning. I like to stir things up, see which opportunities bubble to the surface, then go with the best thing available.

In any job interview or therapy setting, when asked, “Where do you see yourself in five years?”, I’ve always just delivered a noddable string of bullshit. On more than one occasion, I’ve answered with “happy!” (*insert smug smile*).

Unsurprisingly, big questions like “should I have kids?” fall into the category of the unplanned and uncertain.

I always assumed that one day, I’d just know. Or better yet, a cosmic “whoopsie” would seal my fate.

But without a northerly breeze of clarity—or a fertilization accident—I find myself here:

I have a life I like very much.

I am happily married.

I have two perfect gassy Boston Terriers.

I am heading deeper into my own becoming.

I have renewed focus, and I want to see where it goes.

But herein lies the conflict that all good lit demands: I can’t cast off this major, life-altering decision much longer.

Despite feeling like I just doused myself in Hawaiian Tropic before Driver’s Ed, I’m about to turn 36.

In a way that is classically offensive to women, I have entered “geriatric pregnancy” territory—a medical label that feels like a cruel relic.

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I salute all women in their mid-30s (or greater) trying to make the to-kid-or-not-to-kid decision. I doubly salute those who are single, with far less certainty, and opting to put their decision on literal ice.

None of this is easy.

Even with a partner and relative stability, to-kid-or-not-to-kid feels heavy.

And for better or worse, my husband and I are both equally uncertain.

We have not accepted white linen sofas into our hearts, nor have we cleared counter space for a Baby Brezza.

If I had two versions of myself, I’d offer one up to ride in the family minivan and the other to ride top-down into the adults-only resort.

Unfortunately, there is only one version we get to play out. And making a choice that could dramatically and irrevocably change our lives carries enormous weight.

A few months ago at our local brewery, my mom and I stood at the bar. We’d already had a pint or two (one benefit of being childless) when the subject came up.

She admitted something controversial for a mother: she doesn’t really like kids unless they’re her own.

I relate to this entirely.

I find babies intimidating, and truthfully, a bit odd. Whenever I hold one, I feel like I’m doing it wrong—like one sudden hand jerk could put them (and their parents) into a permanently precarious position.

I have nieces and nephews, and I do feel a heart pang for them. When they giggle, cuddle, or inadvertently say something offensive, there’s a surge of warmth. I feel an innate part of me awakening.

But then I see their shitty toys littered across the floor and remember they wake up at 6 AM and apparently aren’t allowed to watch TV anymore. Suddenly, I’m sobered.

I don’t like aquariums and petting zoos.

I don’t want to step on Barbie’s briefcase.

I don’t want to be sleep-deprived for a decade.

My mom capped our barside conversation by asking, “Isn’t there a physical urge that you feel?”

I briefly shuddered at my mom loosely circling our animalistic urge to breed.

Then I responded, “No, I don’t.”

And I don’t. At least not yet.

When I picture the two versions of my life—the minivan and the adults-only resort—I can see happiness in both directions.

I can imagine love expanding in ways I don’t yet understand.
I can imagine a life shaped by untethered curiosity.

I am envious of people who know.

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