Over the years, I’ve developed a habit of being slow to warm up in new social situations. On the surface, I look like an extrovert; my largest and longest running project involves stopping strangers on the street to take their portraits. In reality, I am often guarded. This isn’t shyness; it’s an act of self-preservation, a skill so rooted, I can’t remember when I started practicing it.

To continue writing in the metaphor of this series: I assess a plant before I welcome it into my garden. I am open to new seedlings, of course, but as they grow I keep them in the greenhouse until I see what type of fruit they bear and observe how they fit with what is already growing. As I wrote in Part 1 and 2, I tend to have a lot of seedlings on the go, and when one takes off, it requires extra attention and care to ensure they don’t take over too quickly. Being introduced to seedlings outside of my own control requires even closer scrutiny. Even my close friends can all attest to experiencing this “distance keeping” early on in our relationships. Though they tease me for it, I’m not ashamed. This caution protects my equilibrium from the hobbies or habits that might disrupt it. But even the most stable ecosystem is vulnerable to a changing climate and the randomness of time. With rapid change, invasive species can move in. I have written about planting seeds, tending seedlings, and appreciating my evergreen; now, I must tackle the newest invasive species to take root in my garden.

There is no way to predict how an invasive species will tilt an ecosystem. The variables are immeasurable; the chaos, admirable. North America is defined by uninvited guests. Take the starling, whose roots are tangled in a myth about one man’s obsession, but whose reality is the result of decades of clumsy human intervention. In the Rockies, the mountain pine beetle has turned vast swaths of green forest into a brittle, rusted red. As the winters warm, the invaders proliferate, leaving behind millions of dead trees—standing kindling that waits for a summer spark to ignite our coveted National Parks. On the West Coast, the Himalayan Blackberry swallows whole lots in a single season, impossible to tame. These species don’t just visit; they rewrite the landscape and dismantle food webs. I’ve come to learn the same is true in having kids.

You can read the books and absorb the unsolicited advice, but you cannot prepare for how the chaos arrives in waves. It disrupts the natural flow instantly. The quiet “three coffee” Saturday mornings and the slow, rhythmic two-hour dinner preps vanish. Suddenly, the energy of the home is no longer used for recharging; it is pulled away to the new (and rapidly growing) life.

Before we get any further, I realize that calling one’s child an “invasive species” sounds ungrateful. We chose this path, and we know we are so lucky to be on it. I actively try to appreciate every moment, even the challenging. But to understand the transformation of a life, one must look at the biology of it. My garden hasn’t just changed; it has been terraformed.

Since moving to British Columbia, my wife and I have been fascinated by the Himalayan blackberry. When we first arrived we’d eat them on hikes through the woods or walks along the White Rock Promenade. We would stop for handfuls, accepting the inevitable scratch from a thorn as the fair price for the fruit. Visits to the Gulf Islands meant filling old yogurt containers and turning the harvest into warm crumbles for late summer evenings with friends. When we moved to the city, we found new “honeypots” in the alleyways of East Vancouver and along our bike route home from the beach.

To us, the berries were a gift of abundance. For some of our neighbors, they were a nuisance. While the bushes offered their fruit, they also strangled the landscape, choking out the native flora. We eventually learned the technical term—invasive—and understood the problems they caused for the local ecosystem. But that didn’t stop us from lingering at the thickets. We secretly admired their resilience; they were doing what any relocated species does: thriving in a new home.

We watched as the city tried to “take care” of the thickets with chainsaws and pesticide sprays. I even joined in, volunteering for embankment regeneration projects to restore bike trials and salmon habitats with my students. We hacked at the stalks and tore at the roots, but the blackberries were indifferent to our efforts. Every spring, they returned, climbing and reaching for the sun. Even during the removal, they seemed to fight back, finding a way to catch a sleeve or scratch a bare forearm at will.

I soon realized that my own domestic “regeneration projects” were equally as futile.

As teachers, we spend every August trying to savor the late summer, knowing the school year is lurking just around the corner. To stay in the sun as long as possible, in the first year of parenting, we took long stroller walks through East Van. Near our home, massive blackberry bushes draped over the fences of a developer’s “community garden.”

We would stop there and let Luna watch from her stroller as we reached into the thickets. I remember the first time we dropped a handful of berries onto her plastic tray; her eyes lit up at the taste of the sweet, dark, staining juice. From then on, she became acutely aware of her environment. Any time we passed a bush, she would boldly demand “More!” and we would obligingly risk our clothing and our bare summer skin to keep the tray full.

It was our first shared harvest, and a new bonding experience paid for in scratches.

Our little invasive mimicked her new favorite fruit. At first, only a few vines pushed into our established routines, disrupting sleep and siphoning the energy we had once used to foster other seedlings. We expected the disruption, but we were not prepared for the speed of the takeover. Soon, more branches reached out in unpredictable directions, and there was no denying that the landscape had changed.

We tried to maintain a sense of order, but the more we fought the growth, the more we seemed to get cut. If we tried too hard to pin a vine down, like insisting on a bedtime routine that worked last week but failed tonight– the thorns only seemed to return sharper. Just when I thought I had figured out the shape of the plant, the vines would shift. It would catch me on a bare ankle or a wrist just as I was reaching for what I thought would be a moment of sweetness. At times, the growth felt overwhelming, challenging everything I knew about the garden I had worked so hard to establish. It was easy to feel drowned in the weight and sharpness of it all. Of course there is the fruit, the sweetest moments of raising a child, but they are usually buried through the thorns of tantrums, 2 am wake-ups, and bowls of rice on the floor.

In Medicine Wheel for the Planet, Dr. Jennifer Grenz describes a shift in her understanding of “invasives.” Instead of a “cookie-cutter” approach of managing what doesn’t belong, she advocates for a relationship based on reciprocity and respect. She suggests that we have the freedom to decide whether a species belongs based on its relationship to that specific place. It is a worldview where we see ourselves within the system, influencing it to meet the needs of all our relations– our own needs included.

I have had to undergo a similar shift. I’ve abandoned the fantasy of the safely managed greenhouse and embraced the randomness that comes with this particular invasive species. My wife and I are no longer simply “succumbing” to the takeover; instead, as suggested in books like Hunt, Gather, Parent, we are integrating our child into the lives we already loved, rather than letting the old garden be fully invaded. It’s a delicate balance, and by no means have we perfected it. But as teachers who preach a “growth mindset”, we are fully bought into the trial and error nature of our new garden.

We are learning the symbiosis of the thicket. Rather than fighting the growth, we are tending to it. We are learning where to prune and where to let the vines run wild. The goal is no longer to mourn the environment as it existed “pre-blackberry.” The goal is to develop the patch so that it bears more fruit and, with any luck, fewer thorns.

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Part 1: Sowing Seeds

Part 2: Cultivation

Part 3: Seedlings

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This is the evergreen of my life. A relationship that began as a seedling in high school and has grown into a magnificent tree. For almost two decades, this tree has weathered every storm and drought, offering safety and remains strong despite the shifting seasons. It provides more than just shade or resources; it offers a frequent, often humorous dose of reality that keeps me grounded when I start to drift, and now has sprouted new growth which has brought its own joys and challenges. We will explore from the ground up.

To understand the height, strength, and health of a tree, we can start by looking at the roots.

An evergreen’s roots can spread three times wider than its branches, anchoring the soil, providing safe spaces for life, and nourishing everything around it. Our relationship began with a similar base. We started as a seed dropped into a soil already rich with nutrients; a common friend group closely tied with similar interests and eclectic personalities. Surrounded by that shared community, our roots, just starting to grow, didn’t have to fight for water and attention. They grew fast, encouraged and intertwined with the people who saw us as individuals before they saw us as a pair. Our roots never wound too tight. We preferred to leave space to breathe and let others in. This allowed us to grow into our own while still discovering ourselves as a couple; a structural adaptation that would serve as a recurring strength, but also, at times, a weakness.

Today, we have been together longer than we were ever apart. Our original soil and biome has shifted a few times over the last two decades, but the habit of encouraging a close community and symbiosis to keep our roots strong remains. Like an ancient tree that becomes an ecosystem for everything around it, our strength is found in a two-way flow: we offer a supportive environment for our friends and family, and they, in turn, offer nutrients back.

Growth is rarely easy. A tree that never feels the wind remains brittle; it’s the constant swaying and bending that forces a trunk to develop some “reaction wood” a denser, stronger core. Our relationship was built on some of that same stress.

Shortly after we started dating, we moved to universities four hours apart. At times, it was a 8 hour journey by bus and/or train. For many, the distance would have been the beginning of the end. It would have been easy to be uprooted. For us, it was the tough weather that thickened the trunk. We learned to communicate and connect with lots of trial and error, through T9 texts and nightly phone calls. Most importantly, we had to learn to trust. Trust that the space we allowed in our root system would be filled by people who would help us grow, and trust that when we saw each other again, we would find the energy to survive the next drought. We had to believe that through these tests, we would find strength rather than weakness.

Those tests were frequent and varied; late-night calls from loud parties, delayed buses, mid-term stresses, and long stretches where the familiarity became unfamiliar. Balancing the new challenges of living alone, combined with academic stresses was stormy enough. Adding in a long distance relationship pushed us back and forth frequently. But through it all, we were able to keep our sights on the next time we’d see one another. It allowed us to stay hopeful for reconnection, but continue to build ourselves as individuals in the meantime. The joy which came when those storms would clear was unlike anything we’d experienced before, and trying to concentrate that feeling in the spring and summer became the goal.

As the winter semesters thawed and spring came, we took on an adventure and moved to the Rockies. These were our seasons of “plenty”. Stretches of concentrated light and connection. Like an evergreen locking in the nutrients during times of abundance, we soaked up these months, storing the energy we knew we would need for the cold winters ahead. We were having fun, finding adventure, in a new biome, making new connections and building a core that could resist upcoming storms.

But, even the sunniest seasons have their pests. We were moving from the total independence of our dorm room lives to the friction a small shared space. Life in a tourist town meant busy days, late nights, and hazy judgement that comes from an endless supply of craft beer. Balancing multiple jobs, new friends, and an endless supply of adventure opportunities became our new challenges. We had to learn a new version of “us”, navigating the small infestations that come along with moving to a different habitat. Like a tree that stands tall in the forest, we saw the beauty of the Rockies together and were able to solidify memories and experiences together to last a lifetime.

The growth outweighed the pests and when the leaves turned around us and the fall semester returned, but we had built a core that could resist the upcoming season.

Directly after university, we were transplanted. I accepted a teaching job in the Lower Mainland and we uprooted everything we had built in the Rockies and Ontario to move, again, across the country to a province where we knew no one.

We arrived to an empty house (and bank account) that offered no safety net. I had a starting salary, but my wife had no job, and we were gambling on what we could “eventually” achieve, which felt at times, kilometers away. It was a challenge by choice. We had support from our families but this was something we wanted to take on ourselves, breaking free from the forest we had grown comfortably in.

This was the first test of our waxy coating. Evergreens have needles designed to lock in moisture and a shape that allows heavy snow to slide off rather than break the limbs. We survived that first “winter of real life”; the rent, the career stress, and the isolation was trying at times, but we had become hardy by being tested many times before. We had one another and a desire to explore this new environment which acted like our antifreeze. Slowly, our stressed roots started to grow again. Friends from our university days began to migrate towards us, and we regenerated the symbiotic relationships that we built up before, welcoming new people along the way.

We eventually settled into the rhythm of our new environment, our roots and trunk held firm. But, as a tree matures, it begins to branch out.

I found new hobbies, new (and old) friends, and the “freedom” of our adult lives. Moving from the Lower Mainland suburbs to “east van” presented even more opportunities than we could ever imagine. Like any healthy tree reaching for more light, new growth happens in different, and sometimes uncontrolled directions.

In that new, expansive, growth, it was easy to take strong roots for granted. I’ve found that as I get busy watering other seedlings (SoEV, running, biking, tennis, painting, writing…), the evergreen at the center can start to feel some neglect. We became comfortable with the distance during our university years and our new communities, but there is a danger in becoming too comfortable.

I (too often) get distracted and neglect looking up at the branches.

That is when I feel a sharp reminder: a metaphorical knock from a falling branch or a loud creak from the trunk. My wife has a way of sending these signals in a timely fashion, before the neglect becomes permanent. It is a necessary pruning. A sharp, sometimes humorous reality check that cuts back the overgrowth so that light can reach us again.

Like some of the oldest trees in the forest, people are often fascinated by our longevity, which we often forget about. Small daily changes go unnoticed in the greatest trees. Growth is measured by its rings; increments of growth too small to see from the outside and often only truly appreciated when looking back after a full life.

It is easy to assume the strength will always be there, because it always has been, but longevity and stillness can mask complacency. Refocusing on the details; the complex root system, the bark scarred by old stresses from years past, and the life moving through all the branches and roots, reminds us that an evergreens growth is never finished.

It’s a living record of where we’ve been, and a strong foundation for whatever season comes next.

I have one or two more of these planned. The next one, about our little invasive, that has completely changed the landscape of the garden we once knew.

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“Dad, dad, dad, find mine!”

It’s the standard daughter-daycare pickup challenge. We stand together in front of the corkboard where this week’s artwork hangs. Usually a smattering of handprint polar bears or construction paper faces with wonky googly-eyes.

This week, the assignment was “The Best Part of Me”.

I scanned the toddlers’ self-reflections captured eloquently by their teachers. One kid chose their brain, another, their heart.

My daughter chose her hair.

She smiled and skipped into her classroom to grab her bag, leaving me to stare at her self-portrait. I felt a sudden, sharp hypocrisy.

For thirtyish years, I’ve tried to outrun an identity built upon my physical appearance, yet here was my daughter, at four years old, already creating strong ties to vanity related to a feature that I am currently shaving off in the bathroom mirror once a week.

My own identity and vanity first got tangled with my hair in 1996. My Zia, a fresh hair-school graduate, sat my brother and I down in her backyard with her bleach kit and a perforated rubber cap. She pulled tufts of hair through the holes with that god-forsaken hook needle. “It hurts to be beautiful,” she explained. We sat there, somehow breathing in mouthfuls of peroxide despite being in the open air.

Monday morning, I was the only third-grader, and maybe even kid, in the school with frosted tips.

During “O Canada”, I felt the gaze of my peers studying my head in fascination. The kid next to me whispered “What is that?” as they studied my scalp. I spent the first recess explaining “highlights” and my Zia “experimenting” on me over the weekend, hiding the truth: I just wanted to look like a Backstreet Boy or one of those people from the GAP commercials.

That was the beginning of the “Good Hair” era. For the next two and a half decades, I rode every wave, sometimes even creating a wave of my own.

The middle-school shags, the high-school fauxhawks, the professional pompadours and fades.

I cultivated a look of “studied negligence”, using just enough product to make it look like I hadn’t used any at all. I was blessed with thick mousey-brown hair that had just enough curl that it gave me effortless hold and volume. I got to the point where not washing my hair for years led to better and more unique hairstyles. It was a perfect storm, low maintenance with the occasional haircut led to developing my own style. It all came so naturally. Friends consulted me; peers vocally idolized and envied me. I allowed my hair to become my “thing”.

But, I always kept it secretly at arms length. Deep down, I knew my DNA was quietly planning a strike.

Growing up, I was constantly reminded that I inherited my late-grandfathers genes. In his passing; I became the visual representation of what the family had lost. From the shape of my hands and feet, to my stature and posture, I would subtly be reminded of how strong his genes flowed through me.

The most haunting inheritance was the only thing I saw in his old photographs: a thick, dark mane that had vanished by the time I knew him.

The old wives tale of going bald if your mothers father was bald would be debunked over and over as I grew up; being promised it probably won’t happen to me, however, I always subconsciously held onto it. Looking back I see that inherited risk as a gift.

I began to use the clippers as a preemptive strike against destiny.

Every few years, when a hairstyle became too popular or I felt it solidifying as a mask, I would perform a “spring cleaning”. Shaving my head always felt like an act of liberation; a way to peel back the trends and see who was underneath. But in that freedom, always came reminders…

“Appreciate your hair!” my mother would warn whenever I got restless. “You might not have it forever”.

Three years ago, I threw one last party for my youth. I had the opportunity to be home with my daughter during a pat-leave that flowed straight into summer. I was able to push through an awkward long phase and grow a long, full head of curly hair. Or so I thought.

The iPhone camera told a different story. Being a father meant appearing in more photos than ever before, and the lens told no lies.

There were gaps in the curls, patches that looked like a map of my “inheritance”. Rather than journey into treatments (not that I have anything against them), I reached for the clippers.

I got ahead of the inevitable, and for one last time, I made a drastic change.

“Zero, all over, please”; became the new barber shop request.

Acceptance is a hard-won territory these days, and the internet is seemingly determined to claim my scalp. My Instagram feed has become a gallery of ads for Turkish hair-transplant clinics, “miracle” thickening shampoos, and prescriptions that promise the return of the mane. The algorithms diagnosed me as a man in need of fixing the second I clicked one.

Even among the people around me (welcome, late 30s), the conversations of “fixes” is the new trend. They talk about “fin and min” protocols and “the six months post-Turkey” like they’re discussing a new gym routine. No one is blatantly suggesting I do the same, but the world seems to suggest baldness is a choice and by refusing the cure, I’m choosing to be old.

I laugh off the “chrome dome” cracks, but it flows at a steady drip. It’s a strange irony, really. I spent my youth trying to stay ahead of trends and wearing my hair with pride; all while staying out of the limelight it tended to bring. Now, with no hair left to draw any attention, it has equally pulled in a different conversation, even though I was hoping the talks would end.

I am grateful for the time I had with my hair.

But I am more grateful that I found a way to be comfortable in my own scalp, regardless of what grows.

I am satisfied with my new, and likely permanent look; I’ve always been a big hat guy anyways.

My daughter’s hair journey has already been as fascinating and complex as my own. When she was a toddler, she self-soothed by pulling out hair in clumps. It was devastating for everyone involved and we waited patiently for it to finally grow back, covering it for months with cute bonnets, knowing what really hid underneath.

She really does have a beautiful head of hair, and for better or for worse, as she skipped through that daycare classroom, it was clear the world around her had already begun the work of tethering her identity to it.

So I look back to my own journey, and look at this next hair phase as a quiet gift and a challenge. I can show her that a man can lose his “best part” and find that he is still entirely whole.

As always, thanks for reading.

I have a few more DiPartures articles in the line-up, and I’m hoping to get a few more GENEs done this spring.

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I originally wrote the first three sections of this series without speaking to my career as a teacher, which is funny, since teaching is potentially clearest form of seedling-work I know.

Every September, groups of young plants arrive in my classrooms, and for ten months my job is to help cultivate their growth, while navigating new challenges in both cultivation and environment presented daily.

On paper, the work of a teacher looks simple. For example, the curriculum for Grade 12 Chemistry outlines tells me to teach “the dynamic nature of chemical equilibrium”. For any chemist, this would be a walk in the park. It’s a deeply applicable real-life concept, full of great connections and fun labs. But anyone who is in a classroom knows the content is the smallest part of the job.

Around that single content piece, I have to weave scientific inquiry, authentic reflection, First Peoples Principles of Learning, SEL, DEI, digital boundaries, AI literacy– among many others. All the invisible work that quietly shapes a classroom ecosystem and that is meant to shape the student into someone who is ready for a rapidly changing world.

None of this is negative, it’s important, necessary work.

Often, focusing on those aspects brings some of the most rewarding conversations and experiences with students. But when it’s all layered together, it can feel like tending seedlings in an environment with shifting soil and unpredictable weather. New soil (expectations, theories, policies, technologies) brought in every year, buries the content, concepts, and skills that served as the foundation for years prior. Sometimes it can even feel like there’s so much soil, the seedlings and the gardener get drowned in the weight of it all.

And then there are the weeds.

New technologies, trends, and general distractions have been in high schools since…forever, but I’d argue the weeds are getting stronger and more prolific. Finding the balance between offering new tools and managing the chaos that comes with them has always been part of the job, but AI has reshaped the garden entirely. With access to laptops (in our context) comes a never-ending game of whack-a-mole; keeping kids off games, in-class cheating, social media, YouTube. Consider also, the fact that I can’t even say two numbers in order without a disruption to the flow of a lesson. Add unbridled AI access on top, and in two years everything about assignments, assessments, and homework has changed again. Lessons now have to include not just how to use these tools, but when not to, and trying to convince them that the easiest path isn’t always the best for a developing mind.

You also have to share the tending of these seedlings with many other cultivators (other teachers, tutors, university coaches, parents, peers, social media, AI), each with their own opinions on how to tend the garden. Even if our staff is aligned on the direction we believe students should move toward, external forces often bend growth in competing directions.

With all this, I often have to remind myself of what keeps me engaged and enjoying this work: creating an environment where teenagers can learn to manage themselves. To take risks with limited downside. To collaborate effectively. To value, but also challenge others opinions and ideas in a way that strengthens bonds rather than fracture them. To stretch toward the light, developing the strength to learn on their own, and enjoy that process.

But, like with everything in this job it’s about balance. Too much structure and they drown. Too much freedom and some seedlings steal all the nutrients, leaving others in the shade, or, you can miss an essential nutrient one seedling is missing.

It’s delicate work.

After thirteen years, I’ve built an approach that usually balances care and accountability, watering and fertilizer, carefully weeding without being too heavy on the pesticides. But, as mentioned above, the climate keeps changing. I might think I know the direction one wants to grow, but I have to honor the other forces shaping them too. I feel that I have built a strong foundation of my techniques, lessons, and ways of connecting with students that value them as individuals, while offering enough structure for accountability and motivation to keep learning and push their own abilities within my classroom, so, in my opinion my techniques are sound.

I’ve learned to look at these changes as a way to stay curious. As a scientist, it energizes me to experiment with new methods of assessment, and new approaches for a shifting crop, in a changing environment.

I’ve now watched nearly a thousand students step beyond the garden I tend and into the larger ecosystem. Seeing them take root elsewhere is one of the quiet joys of this work. Sometimes, years later, they come back carrying, or seeking another, seed of their own.

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Part 2: Cultivation

This part is about tending those relationships. What it means to recognize early growth and decide how much care to give. This section is also a chance to start extending past the relationships I’ve made taking photos, and also includes some of my even longer term “projects”, my work as a teacher, and, the relationships which continue to grow long after the first signs of germination.

Recognizing seedlings

After a seed has been planted, thrown, or naturally fallen, a multitude of different mechanisms help it to germinate; moisture, warmth, patience, and luck. Only then can it push upwards towards the sun and down into the soil, rooting itself to start its new life. This section will start with some of those earliest stages, some of the barely-visible signs that show something might grow.

The germination stage is delicate and, for me, has been the hardest to develop. Distributing seeds is easy. It can be care free, and sometimes random. But tending to seedlings, or watching these new relationships inch forward, takes a far more nuanced approach. Most of what I’ve learned has come from experimenting, watching what works, and recognizing what doesn’t.

It takes many attempts to recognize seedlings that need some more care, which ones can be left alone, and develop an understanding of cultivating to ensure strong growth that doesn’t overwhelm me, or the garden around me. The challenge is, none of this is obvious, especially when you are first starting this process. But, I have learned to slowly recognize small clues and listen to what is required next– if anything at all.

In Part 1, I mentioned that I often check in on people I have an initial interaction with through taking their photo. Sometimes it’s a simple follow-up encounter on the street. It may be a second photo or a small nod and smile when seeing them again. Sometimes, a quick DM thanking them for sharing a post, or quietly following their work after I put a name to their face. Regardless of how it happens, I try to extend another acknowledgement to the seed I know I have planted.

Through trial and error, I’ve been able to recognize the moments when a seedling is starting to take root. I try not to be too intrusive. I try to be patient. The best opportunities are slow and quiet. It often starts with one of the actions outlined above. Most common; a small smile on the sidewalk, a pause of recognition, letting someone know I see them again.

I think of those first few interactions as light watering; knowing some seeds do best with space. My tomatoes always thrive when they’re not crowded, and people aren’t much different. I try and let the plant do its thing, but make sure the environment is good. A bit of distance allows the seedling to develop its own roots without too much intervention, but total neglect rarely works.

It’s clear that some seeds survive without help, but in a garden, overwatering can rot roots and underwatering starves life.

Early watering mistakes

When I first started this project, I was often overly ambitious in my watering technique. I treated many of those brief, small interactions as if they were enough to make us instant friends, showering seedlings with attention before any real roots had formed. I clearly didn’t understand that seeds take time to germinate.

It didn’t happen too often, as my introversion mostly kept me in check, but I will admit I was overly eager early on. Sometimes I would pay too much attention to details in someone’s online life, or extend an overly ambitious invite to collaborate, even though I had no idea how or what that meant at the time. Looking back, it was probably a mix of energetic youth, enthusiasm, the desire to make my project “successful”, or and plain naivety. This would happen more often than I care to admit. Thankfully, I don’t believe I pushed too hard any single relationship and over time I learned a better balance.

Many of these early “watering” interactions happened online as I was slowly building my social network through taking photos. Wanting to integrate myself deeper into the community, I tried to be “active” in every way I could think of: commenting, liking, and sending messages often. It did lead to some connections, but mostly I was a bit too involved, pouring more water than seedlings needed.

I still aim to interact with people online. In fact, over the past few years I’ve noticed a general decline in positive energy in comment sections, and I want to keep encouraging everyone I follow to keep creating. The difference now is in the amount and intent behind the watering.

I had to overwater and mess up before I learned to figure it out. There was also a time where I backed completely off. Thinking I’d forever just been someone on “the outside”, taking on the “flaneur” persona, deciding that most people were fine to take a photo, but wanted nothing more from me.

That withdrawal ended up teaching me just as much as the overwatering did. Somewhere between too much and too little, I started to understand what the real tending looked like. It started with some of the earliest seeds I distributed, coming back years later and showing life. It was in the patience, and persistence in continuing to work on these projects that people started to share some water back.

Learning balance – patience, slower growth.

Seeing a seedling start to take root is something you have to learn over time, and even now I occasionally miss the signs. I would say this is one of the hardest moments in these relationships. How much time and energy should I give to a seedling, when I have so many other plants to tend? Do I even need any more seedlings? Sometimes still, it’s hard to know.

Over the years, I have shifted towards putting energy into the interactions that happen on the street. As I mentioned in Part 1, I always assume people don’t have time to chat, but lately I’ve gotten better at offering something more substantial with people I run into for the second or third time. It’s taken practice, but finding “ways in” has been something I’m now more confident in.

What I’ve noticed is, although people often present as not wanting to talk, within the first few seconds, there’s usually a small opening or opportunity and people tend to open up. It’s a delicate balance, but one I’ve slowly been learning to read.

Day by day, I’ve learned that the seedlings respond less to what you say and more to the kind of energy and presence you present yourself. For me, it’s become more about making myself available, offering the water, but not drowning the relationship.

Tending with care

It might be because I’ve tended to the relationship with patience and care, or maybe people are looking for more meaningful connection with strangers lately; something I am still trying to figure out. These interactions are less frequent now that my time in the neighborhood is limited, but when they do happen, they’re beautiful.

In the simplest conversations, it’s a small check-in, a light sprinkle of water. In the deeper conversations, an opportunity is presented to learn about the seedlings’ growth, its environment, the potential fruits it might bear, or even the effect I’ve had on it, or it’s fellow seedlings. A more meaningful cultivation.

As someone who is often cautiously optimistic, and naturally skeptical (sorry, I’m a scientist), it’s taken me some time to bring a fuller optimism to these interactions. Seedlings require that optimism; we need to believe in the potential of growth. My caution, I realized, was a guarding mechanism. A fear of putting myself too far out there without receiving anything in return. Likely, a combination of reacting to my over watering, and likely some friendship failures early on in my life.

But as I’ve grown older, and more confident in myself, I realize that my energy is never wasted, it’s the action of continuing to water and care that is the key.

There comes a time then, when people move beyond the “seedling” phase, and become a full-grown plant. Maybe, I know their name, who their roommates are, what their artform is, or where/what they do for work. Sometimes, they’re even the one who stops me on the street, happy to see me, or wanting to share a reaction to a recent post or writing.

These are then the seedlings that go from “street acquaintances” to “budding-friendships”. And before we reach that next stage, I have to talk about the work I’ve done for the past thirteen years. The work that taught me how to nurture growth in others long before I started taking photos.

That will come, in Part 3: The Garden Classroom.

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This is Part 1 of a series I have been working on for the last few months. I wrote an introduction to the series, which gives an overview and background on why I decided to use seeds as my analogy for collaborations and friendships in the neighborhood, which can be found here.

This part Sowing Seeds will look at the earliest stages of forming relationships, and how through continuing to meet new people, I’ve grown out of my own shell and refined my approach.

Towards the end, I discuss "Seedlings”, and discuss finding a balance with these ideas.

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The Roots

The seeds concept started to take root in my mind during long summer walks through East Van between 2018 and 2021. I’d head out around 10 a.m. and walk until I couldn’t anymore—sometimes covering over 20 kilometers in a day.

My primary goal was to photograph people and culture in the busier, more commercial neighborhoods like Commercial Drive, Hastings, and Main Street. But I often found myself drawn into the slower streets between to get out of the sun for a bit or to catch up on a podcast.

In these quieter neighborhoods, boulevard gardens overflow with wildflowers, alley fig trees stretch into the in-between spaces, and grasses grow through cracks in the pavement all season long. An abundance of moss softens the hard concrete surfaces and at times you forget you are in a major metropolitan area. Some might see these neighborhoods as unkempt or disorganized. I see them as places that maximize space for life.

I’ve always had a habit of picking grasses, sedges, and berries while walking; cultivated by my childhood exploring the banks of Lake Ontario. I used to love picking the seeds of the rust coloured curly dock around Lake Ontario and letting them slowly be taken by the wind in an open palm while I explored. Plucking a handful of ash berries as I walked around the neighborhood with my family, tossing them at trees and mailboxes for target practice. Today, I still catch myself pulling a dusty yellow rye and picking the spike apart as I meander through the neighborhood. I always stop for blackberries and figs, and you’d be surprised how many wild blueberries, raspberries, or salmonberries you can find in the city if you’re paying attention. Naturally, along with the picking, comes dropping, throwing, and distributing.

At some point, I realized that this habit likely resulted in a subconscious, but potentially purposeful, distribution of seeds.

Maybe it’s a deep instinct, something passed down from agrarian ancestors. Maybe it’s just the way seeds catch the eye, little vessels of life, asking to be carried. Either way, this habit stayed with me. And as I moved through the busy streets, meeting strangers day after day, it started to feel like more than a coincidence.

Random Distribution of Seeds - Growing New Connections

As I’ve written many times in these reflections, my interactions with people have usually been brief—especially in the beginning. When I take a stranger’s photo on the street, I often assume they’re between errands and short on time. Maybe they’re carrying groceries or on their way to catch up with a friend. I never want to slow them down.

Still, it was in these early short interactions that I first noticed what felt like “seed distribution”. Small exchanges and fleeting impressions. And, as someone who’s always been introverted and never enthusiastic about small talk, these quick interactions felt like enough.

I assumed the “street photo experience” stuck in their mind for at least the day, maybe they ended up checking out the project, or told a friend. These experiences I equated more to letting go of the curly dock seeds randomly by the lake. Never intentionally “planting” a seed or thinking much about the result of sending those seeds out.

The seed concept was then realized into something more substantial when I started thinking further about my sticker distribution.

Stickers

I’ve always given a token of appreciation for people’s time and participation in the project.

It’s small, easy to carry, and usually brings a smile when I hand it to my “model” of the moment. My stickers are a way to say thank you, but also my first way of planting a seed. So far, I’ve distributed over 10,000 stickers. After I hand people a sticker, they are slipped into pockets, tossed in bags, or stuck onto laptops, skateboards, mailboxes, and signposts. Much like seeds, sometimes they’re saved, sometimes used, sometimes discarded. But regardless of that outcome, they are a moment of connection. Small, maybe, but meaningful.

In the right conditions, these seeds take root and become something more. Seeds contain genetic information, nutrients for the seedling, and protection for that package.

I look at the stickers the same way.

The information on how to find the project is on each sticker, as well as an opportunity to engage with the artist who designed the sticker. This builds both connections with my project and the neighborhood community. The nutrients being the energy and care I put into both my interactions on the street and online. The protective layer is the “utility” of the sticker for the end user, making sure it doesn’t simply get tossed the second after we have our interaction.

The stickers have opened doors to relationships and collaborations. Offering the sticker, lately, has also offered opportunity for a proper introduction, quick chat, or even sharing a story. Prior, I’d hand over the sticker as I was actively walking away, signaling the interaction was over. Still a bit nervous about how long people wanted to chat, if at all.

But as I’ve (and the project have) grown I’ve formed many more ‘neighborly’ relationships. I’ve learned what it takes to give a bit more energy into ensuring the seed has a good spot to land without over watering or burying it too deep on that first interaction. I don’t look at every single interaction as a seedling that has to grow, but I also want to ensure that the right conditions are present in case it wants to.

I often imagine the grass and berry seeds I’ve distributed over time on the sidewalks, allies, and front yards. Some end up blown away in an evening breeze. Some dry up and decompose. Others are carried away by birds or other opportunistic organisms. But some, by chance, end up in the perfect place to start to grow. I look at the seeds I plant with strangers much the same way. How I hand that sticker over and the feeling of the interaction in general, is such an important aspect of putting these seeds in places that they can grow.

Although our encounters are brief, I have an opportunity to plant an idea, feeling, and a positive experience with the person.

From Seed to Seedling…or Not

After the seeds are distributed, it is up to the nutrients and energy stored within the packet to do the work. There then is the opportunity to become a seedling, an early relationship formed on a simple moment which can then potentially form early roots.

Once the photo is published, it’s then a chance for me to see if the seed has grown into something more. Did they check the account? Did they follow? Did they share? Did they message to say thank you? None of these are expected or required, of course, but the sheer curiosity always gets the best of me.

Of course, there are many seeds I’ve planted that I will never see take root. For one reason or another, our paths never cross again. Our algorithms avoid connecting, or the sticker gets lost, washed, or buried at the bottom of a bag. There are many cases of authentic interactions and enthusiastic thank-yous, only never to hear from or see the person again. Even when conditions seem right, sometimes the seeds don’t take root.

Distributing these seeds hoping for them to grow in the future is a delicate balance, and, just like real seeds, I realize they can’t all grow all at once. They need to land at the right time, in the right environment, and the right moment of the lifecycle to take root. Some seeds are able to stay dormant for years without taking root, some need an extreme event, others, take hold immediately.

Regardless of what happens, I am patient with the seeds I distribute. Like the plant seeds I throw, I constantly am distributing, without thinking much about where they go, but rather, I focus my energy on continuing to distribute them in a positive and productive way, to allow more life to flourish.

Like the overgrown gardens I appreciate so much, lately, I imagine SoEV as a wild garden rather than an organized farm. Many seeds have been planted, some have grown, some have stayed dormant, but when I am eventually done with this project, I hope that a lot of these plants have grown wild and form their own symbiotic relationships through my distribution and continue to thrive on their own.

In Part 2: Cultivating, I will discuss some of the successes, realizations, and challenges that come along with distributing so many seeds, but there is one more type of seed planting I’d like to highlight in this section that is a bit different than the “random distribution” I outlined above.

Once relationships are formed, depending on the frequency in which I interact with the people, there comes a chance to share another, more intentional seed, this time, in the form of an idea.

Sharing More Seeds

Often, I get the opportunity to check in on the seedlings, if they make it to that stage. Locals, business owners, retail workers, musicians, servers and bartenders, have all become part of this slowly growing network and paying attention to the development of the seeds has become another opportunity for growth. I’ve made a habit of always saying thank you when people share my photos in their own networks (if IG allows) and again, it becomes another opportunity to nurture, plant, or simply check-in on, a seed.

Although I detest a lot about my relationship with social media, one thing I genuinely love is being able to keep up with people’s art and hobbies in the community. Being able to ask a question or connect with them based on what I’ve seen between our photos is often a nice surprise for people. I’ve found so many painters, designers, and musicians I consistently keep up with through taking their photos over the years.

Once these relationships have been formed, I have an uncanny ability to keep projects in mind as I am making further connections. It’s a skill I’ve mentioned I’ve learned from a few of my friends, but it’s also become a habit as I continue to plant these seeds.

With people I would consider then, in my circle of “associates” or even “friend”, I constantly am planting a more specific type of seed. “Idea seeds”.

Maybe it’s a project I’ve had in mind and believe they’d be a good collaborator. Or it’s an idea I can’t personally pursue, but think it’s perfect for them. Other times, it’s a cross collaboration, hearing from someone in one circle looking for a specific skill set in another.

Once these “idea seeds” are handed over, I will check back in once and a while to see if the friend has been watering. Did that new seed take root? Have they been taking care of the seedling? Are they actively cultivating and allowing it to grow? Or, did they simply toss the seed into a drawer or leave it on the sidewalk after we chatted.

I try and have no ego with the seed sharing, I realize many people have many plants to tend, and my seeds may just end up in a pile of tasks already being built up in their life. But, upon any indication of care, I will continue to help water and cultivate that seed further.

Realizations & Receiving Seeds

Initially, I was often disheartened when I saw some seeds wouldn’t take root.

There have been multiple times I walked away from a conversation thinking “I think I just made a new friend”; only to never hear from that person again. Or, I try to plant a seed with extra care, giving it warmth and attention, certain it would take root. Only to see it wash away.

But it’s in these moments I reflect on the seeds others have offered me and how willing I’ve been to receive them.

Sometimes, I simply don’t have the time to take care of more. With everything going on in our own lives, receiving a seed that requires care and attention might be the last thing we are capable of. That doesn’t make it personal–it’s just gardening.

I’ve learned not to be discouraged. Not every seed will sprout, and that’s not the point. What matters now is the practice: the act of placing and planting, sharing and receiving, again and again, as a quiet offering to the community.

It’s safe to say that most of the seeds I plant, I never see again. But, every once in a while, one returns. It’s unexpected, but beautiful in its growth. It’s made me wonder how many others are growing somewhere out of sight. Maybe we’re all part of someone else’s garden, or forest, without knowing it.

With the distribution of seeds completed, we move from sowing to tending. In the next section, I’ll explore what happens when a seed really takes hold, how I’ve learned how to recognize the ones worth cultivating, and the multiple types of plants, fruits, flowers, and abundance that can be found with this approach.

As always, thank you for reading, if you’re enjoying this series so far, let me know by leaving a like, commenting, or sharing, and if you haven’t already, subscribe for more!

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At this point of this project, they don’t think I can make it down Commercial drive, from 12th to Venables, and not get recognized as “seasons”.

I tend do disagree, because in my experience, I often make it there and back without much interaction at all.

I’ve been known to have a forgettable face, often having to reintroduce myself many times to people. Assuming someone would remember my face after a quick 90 second interaction (with 60 of the seconds my face is covered by my camera) doesn’t exactly align based on previous experience.

I am often the one recognizing people I’ve taken a photo of, and saying a quick hello. Often wondering if they had any idea who just smiled at them.

That being said, there are definitely times where I have been out for coffee or a walk with my friends and I run into people I know through Seasons, so I definitely know where they are coming from…

Now to the running,

Let’s Start at the End

In training for a marathon, there are many ways to use visualization to help prepare the mind for what the body is about to endure. You can; image yourself striding with strong and graceful form, see yourself progressing through the course map or landmarks, plan your outfit and memorize your hydration schedule, and of course, visualize yourself running through the finish.

When I was running through these mental exercises over the last few weeks, one of the things I was looking forward to the most, was running through the last stretch of the race and seeing friends and family cheer me on. This is not typically something I’d look forward to (as someone who dreads attention) but last year, that last 200m was painful and slow, but seeing my wife and daughter and friends cheer me on filled me with the energy to finish with a smile and proud, despite both hamstrings being cramped up tight. It’s a memory I’ll cherish forever.

This year, it was easily my favorite part again.

I wasn’t intending to write this running update. I figured three running posts was enough for this Substack. But, soon after the race, a funny interaction changed my mind.

I finished the race seeing my wife and daughter holding a cute little sign and with big smiles despite the pouring rain clouds that met us at the finish line. Standing with them, was my good friend Rys and his partner, holding a sign that provided me with a huge laugh. I smiled and waved, excited, and headed through to the finish. Another marathon done. I grabbed my post-run snacks and a bottle of water and headed to our designated meeting spot.

As we stood there in the pouring rain talking about the race, another participant came over to us, smiled and said:

“Hey, are you seasons?”.

Rys, being one of the friends who is in on the inside joke (mentioned above), grinned from ear to ear…

I recognized him and his partner as people I’ve taken a photo of in the last couple years and we chatted about the race and east van. In passing he mentioned that he had read my previous running posts…which, (I often feel like no one is reading any of this) was super validating!

So, post-race, friend, thanks for the inspiration to write another one.

There were bumps and learnings along the way and I thought I’d share. Although I am very satisfied with my result, I can think of ways to improve further.

Getting back to the Starting Line

Within the first 48 hours after my first marathon, (the Victoria Marathon last year), I registered again. As my brother so eloquently put it “I had some unfinished business”. (If you’re interested, you can read all about that experience here.)

Although I had a great experience and was ecstatic to even finish my first marathon, I wanted to break the 4 hour mark and was slightly disappointed I was just shy at 4:09.

I knew I had it in me.

After I published my post-marathon reflection last year, a lot of the feedback I received was related to not having enough “high-quality” runs in my training program.

My diet and volume was sufficient, but I wasn’t doing enough speed workouts. I went back and researched the program I was following a bit more, and realized it was way too novice for what I was trying to achieve, so the first decision I made in starting to train again this year, was to commit to a much stronger program.

With lots of my friends already using the Runna app, I decided to dive in.

A quick endorsement

I don’t want to write any more than I have to for an app review. But I’ve been very impressed with the Runna App/running coaching program, and would recommend it to anyone who wants to get better at running, no matter the distance (with a simple caveat coming later).

I’ve said it multiple times during this training, this is the best app I’ve ever used, and not just for running. It was so intuitive, very engaging, and worked flawlessly with my Apple Watch SE and iPhone 12 (yes, an aging combination).

I used it for my full training program as well as a weight lifting program.

It progressed me perfectly, provided fun speed workouts, and kept me confident in my abilities week after week, with some nice sprinkles of AI insights, pace tests, and a great feedback mechanism that tailors your plan to you as your body adapts. If you’re on vacation, or want to change up the strength training, it’s a couple of clicks away to adjust the program and you’re on your way again.

The Training Program

The program I selected was the longest one you are able to do. Four days a week, with 2-3 strength sessions per week. I was fortunate to have the time and capacity to do a full 26 week program and there were definitely times where this was a bit more than I could chew (luckily, I am fortunate to have summers off to take on something like this).

Amazingly, during this program, I only ended up missing about 70km of the prescribed (1400km) program. I was able to stave off any major illness or setbacks and I believe it was due to a combination of a well thought-out running program, and my supplements and diet (which I followed very closely as my last program. Simply; sufficient protein, Vit C & D, fish oil, glutamine, creatine during the heavier weeks, and a proper carb load leading into the race this year), and my nightly mobility routine.

At the peak of the training I was doing 75km per week, and was faced with many periods of soreness during that time. I chalked most of it up to body adaptations as I increased the weekly kilometers. Shin splints, hamstring tightness, hip strain, Achilles aches, and general fatigue, all set in at different times but I often found a week or so later, some pain area would go away…but another area would start.

Compared to last training cycle, I almost doubled the amount of kilometers I did, so it made sense that my body would have to adapt in a big way.

Towards the end of the training (mid July and early August) I was feeling strong, confident, and none of the aches and pains were really holding me back from engaging in the next run in the plan.

I had just gotten back to a cooling BC from Ontario where I was running in 40 degree humid weather, but was still able to get all my runs in, and was also ecstatic about getting to run a bunch with my brother.

It was all going very, very well, until the last long, fast, race pace run.

A Small Set Back

Runna was giving me a goal of 4:50 min/km pace for the marathon based on my paces on fast runs as calculated by the algorithm on the app.

I personally thought this was too fast, considering my pace last year was 5:51 min/km. But, I put my trust in the process, and was really enjoying some of the fartlek and fast 14km+ runs I was engaging in.

On the last big training run (34km, with 18km at race pace), I was feeling quite strong and really started to think that around the 5:00 min pace was achievable for the race…

I had been a bit sore leading up to that run. Likely a combination of over training in the summer months, juxtaposed to coming to a screeching halt when school started again and instead of adding another 10-20 km of walking like in the summer, I was mostly sitting at a desk again.

I headed to a flat area for the long pacey run. After having a decent warm up, I was feeling good and was able to increase, and then sustain, the race pace for the entire allotted time, despite a heavy headwind.

As soon as I finished the 18km at pace (30km total into the run), my hamstring locked up. Reminiscent of some of the cramps I’d experience back in my soccer days, and VERY similar to the cramp I had around kilometer 25 during the marathon last year when I bonked.

I was shocked, this hasn’t happened since last year and I had done so much weight training, I didn’t think I’d have those weaknesses still.

I ran slow back to my car for the remaining 4km, and spent the entire time thinking how I might have just ruined my entire training block.

Upon reflection I realized it was a combination of factors. Likely pushing too hard after a busy work week. I was probably under fueled from the week and I only packed one gel. My body was also over compensating from previous aches and I ran out of water into a nasty headwind.

Hindsight 20/20, I wish I didn’t push myself at that pace, for that long, in that headwind. I felt like I needed to prove to myself that that pace was sustainable, but I should have listened to my body rather than my ego. I did it, but at what cost.

We live run, and we learn.

For the next three weeks, I was going to physio, doing all sorts of strengthening exercises, and dealing with a lingering tightness, or what I came to understand as “muscle guarding”. I cut back on the kms for those weeks and decided not to engage in any more “fast” runs until the week before the race.

This set-back unfortunately did not give me the confidence going into the taper weeks leading up to the marathon. Not great considering my taper tantrum last year.

This is also where my Runna caveat comes in.

Runna vs. ChatGPT Training

As I was dealing with this setback, I was going back and forth with ChatGPT to see what it would suggest to stay fresh, but not over train and lead to further injury.

I likely could have used the live chat function on Runna, but at times, the coaches take over 24 hours to reply, and I was genuinely curious what ChatGPT was capable of here.

It (GPT) was a very useful tool. It offered mobility workouts, diet and supplement suggestions, and some mental exercises to keep me feeling confident through the taper weeks. It also gave me some adapted runs as I would input the Runna suggested runs and see what it thought about the pace and distance with what I was currently dealing with physically.

The most impactful thing was continuing loading the hamstring (which my PT recommended as well) and doing neuromuscular flossing nightly, slowly stretching but not in a static way.

Realizing that Runna uses AI for most of its calculations of the training, I figured ChatGPT could get close enough.

It had me thinking, could I have just used this for the entire training block? There are many videos/blogs already out there comparing the two, but what I will say briefly in response, is that, yes, ChatGPT could likely set up a program for you.

But, the ease of use and organization of the Runna app is worth the money. Again, it’s a dedicated app built for this job, and it does it’s job very well.

Another thing I noticed was the longer I used the same prompt window on ChatGPT, the more it would seem to forget things we talked about before, which I could imagine would lead to some wonky prescriptions for a training program 10+ weeks into using it as your sole trainer. For example, the first time I inputted the prompt to see at what frequency I should take the gels, it came up with a plan of one gel every thirty minutes, which when I compared to stuff I saw online, made sense. But, a couple of days before the race, it started telling me I only needed four.

Regardless, combining my own sheer will to want to get to the starting line, and ChatGPTs advice on how to do that, I was able to maintain my distances in the last couple of weeks. I was extremely careful not to irritate my hamstring leading up to race weekend and thankfully I avoided making it worse.

The shocking this was, this was the first time in the last 26 weeks my legs felt…not sore.

Race Weekend

Another thing I was really looking forward to about race weekend was the kids 1km run which my daughter participated in, and the 5km race that my wife participated in. Within the couple hours we were down at Willows beach, the race luckily ran during a pocket of dryness and it was so fun to see them both PR against their times last year. It’s a really fun atmosphere and a great way to get everyone involved in the weekend festivities.

Last year on that weekend, I really struggled with fueling during a weekend away. Being at the park all day for their races, and then meeting up with friends, I was too distracted and hadn’t packed nearly enough food.

This year, (with the assist of my wife and ChatGPT), I packed way more snacks and I was really enjoying my last day of carb loading, with a peanut butter and honey sandwich followed by bottles of electrolytes, fig bars, dates, a cookie etc… guiltless snacking.

Race morning finally came and the forecast was calling for a windy, but relatively clear day.

I got to the start early, hit the bathrooms, and spent about 30 minutes behind Parliament warming up. Another big mistake I made last year was hanging around the crowds near the starting line. My body did not react well to the general nervous energy I felt, so I decided this year to keep to myself until the last possible minute.

This was a gift and a curse. I was able to keep my HR down and get a proper warm-up in, as well as wish some friends who were also running good luck. But because I came back to the starting area just before the start of the race, I wasn’t able to line up with the pacer I had visualized following for the first half of the race.

I didn’t let that discourage me though, as my body was feeling great, and I had made the assumption that that scenario was possible in a sold-out marathon. I told myself to stick with the plan, and check my watch frequently. Don’t let the energy of the start of the race take me too fast.

My Race

My race started out great. I had visualized/strategized starting the race slow, ensuring to save energy for the end. Patient start, strong finish was the mantra.

I mostly stuck to that strategy.

The first 21km felt…easy. I was moving at a much faster pace than I had anticipated, but my body felt strong and I was able to slow down on declines to preserve some energy while still maintaining a good pace. I was not feeling tired or out of breath, so I kept within a range of what I thought was manageable.

My gel strategy for the race was one Maurten 160 every 30 minutes to avoid bonking like I did on that 34km training run and during the marathon last year.

At kilometer 25, that strategy threw a wrench at me as I felt some…gastro problems. I had been training my gut for weeks leading up to the race, bringing two or three gels with me on long runs, but I had never taken in that many gels in one go.

Deciding it was worth stopping to take care of…that, I hit the washrooms at the turn around point, and it didn’t slow me down that bad.

During that “break”, I neglected to take another gel when I should have. I couldn’t fathom it after the way my stomach was feeling. After I restarted running, about another 15-30mins in, I decided to reach for a gel, but my mouth was immediately rejecting the idea, so I just pushed through.

As soon as we hit the 25-30k, racers started to cramp up. I could see hamstrings and calves around me tighten up in real time, but I had no sensations of it happening, so I tried to ignore it. I kept taking in water and was trying to stay calm in my cadence.

I was able to keep pace heading up and down hills deep into the race, but I turned a corner around 34k, and as I headed towards a steep incline. On the first couple strides up hill, my hamstring solidified into a painful concrete block.

Luckily, I have been here before, and last time, it was about 10km earlier. Mentally, I knew this was a possibility. It had given me problems before, and at the pace I was pushing, something was likely to go.

Thinking about “problems” I could face on the race was part of some of the visualization exercises I was doing leading up to the race, I was mentally prepared for what would come next.

I walked up the rest of the hill, brought my heart rate down, choked down a gel, and continued running.

I had to slow my pace initially, but as I kept running, I felt the pain wasn’t going to return. My legs were tired at this point, and welcomed the slower pace regardless. I was now running in the 5:30-5:45 pace and I could slowly see my average pace on my watch tick up from 5:02, to 5:05, to 5:07, and so on.

Unfortunately, this is where the marathon became most unenjoyable. My feelings of being “over it” was likely a combination of knowing a massive hill was coming at 37km, being disappointing I had to slow the pace…again, and physiologically, being out of glucose for my brain.

But, I persevered, with the help of some fellow runners (shout out to the 65 year old guy who ran with me from km 38-40 and chatted). Then with about 3km left, an alumni who had just done the half marathon race and ran with me for 500m cheering me on and gave me the last bit of wind in my sails to make it to the finish at a faster pace. She also took this great photo (thanks, Toy!).

Final Reflections

Unlike the first time around, when I got through the finish, I had zero ambitions of signing up again.

Although the end was just as sweet, and exactly what I had envisioned, this race really pushed me too many months, and really tested me on the day.

I truly buy into the idea of pushing ourselves to “do hard things”, but, I also like to maximize my enjoyment per time commitment.

I am certainly satisfied with my results, being roughly 30 minutes faster than my first attempt is no joke, but again, I can’t help but wonder, could I have gone lower?

At this point, I have no further ambitions for a full marathon, but am rather looking to focus on going lower on shorter distances. Maybe after a year or so away from that distance, I’ll continue to build my strength and love of running, and look for another race at the marathon distance, and maybe have another running story to tell.

As always, thanks for reading. If you are enjoying keeping up with the DiPartures section of my Substack, please consider subscribing, hitting the like button, or sharing with a friend.

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This one though, you can say, I’ve been working on for the last 10 years, and writing it for the last few months. For the first five years, I was experimenting and learning. Now, I have a strong sense of my methods and feel it’s time to share some insights.

This post is an introduction to the series, the following parts and their topics can be found here:

Part 1: Roots, Stickers, Seedlings

Part 2: Cultivation

Introduction

This originally started as a guide for my method of forming and developing creative/collaborative relationships, but as I’ve been expanding my understanding and finding metaphors that fit my methods, this writing quickly became about relationships in general and has grown into something I can’t stop thinking about.

As an introvert who decided years ago to randomly approach people on the street and ask them for their photo, I have had to work on and develop methods to meet new people, be comfortable in uncomfortable situations, and learn new ways of forming relationships. It’s forced me to learn how to grow new friendships, and healthily maintain old ones.

This guide is intended to use metaphor and natural phenomena to illustrate my approach to relationships. In order to really dig into the concepts, some background and acknowledgements are required.

I am in no way an expert in horticulture, but, I have been around gardening in some capacity my entire life.

I’ve always had an interest in plants and have been observing the natural rhythms of the seasons more carefully as I’ve grown older. My understanding of plants was founded in a childhood where time in the summer was often spent in the garden by virtue of grandparents being childcare providers during the summer months. My parents and grandparents kept large backyard gardens and as I grew older, my role in helping to maintain them increased. Being European agrarian immigrants, tending a garden was an important aspect of life. I watched the trials and tribulations of the yearly harvest in their backyards and learned through my own curiosities. While language was often a barrier, we learned to speak the same language in the garden.

Watching and learning to tend the land not only gave me an appreciation of plants and the fruits of labor, but also the relationships that form when you consistently caring for a living thing, between you and the plants, and among the people who share that care.

The part of growing plants that always fascinated me was the collection, germination, and subsequent planting of seeds. Little packets of energy left over from a plants life, patiently waiting for the right conditions to continue on their delicious legacy.

What I am attempting to do in this series, is to use the concept of planting seeds and maintaining plants, as an allegory for relationships. In meeting thousands of people through my street photography project, I have been able to grow relationships of all shapes and sizes. Some have turned into long-term friendships, others one-off collaborations, and some are still growing in different directions. In trying to develop my own understanding of myself, and my relationships to others, this concept of planting seeds has taken a hold of me as the roots of these ideas have sunk further and further into my mind.

This analogy, or allegory, is not unique to me and I will lean heavily on the texts that have gotten me to where I am today, with gratitude and admiration. One of my favorite books of the last decade is Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, and going back to it every couple of years in my classroom has given me the tools to think about life through a lens that approaches all trophic levels equally with respect. She does a beautiful job using Indigenous ways of knowing to illustrate the symbiotic relationships of plants and other beings. She carefully tells stories of plants that help people of all ages understand our relationships to one another. Of course it speaks to me even deeper as I am also a scientist myself.

A second book that inspired this writing is Medicine Wheel for the Planet by Jennifer Grenz– another indigenous author who has learned so much about life and relationships through her work with plants, and that work will be in focus more in the latter parts of this writing.

Lastly, I was reading The Triumph of Seeds by Thor Hanson during the writing of this, which helped ensure some of my more scientific understandings were backed up by literature, and of course helped inspire though great story telling.

In the summer of 2025, after spending a month back living in an “east van” on the unceded territory of the Coast Salish Peoples, I felt it was time to put these understandings into writing and share the insights on how I’ve been approaching collaborations and relationships over the last few years. During that time, I started to pay more attention, branch out even further, and write some concepts down. Having this writing in mind refocused my attention to all of the people who have helped sustain the energy of this project, and I hope if you’re one of those people, you can find yourself in some of these analogies.

What I originally thought would be one post, has now turned into over 10,000 words that I keep adding and refining to.

So, this will be a multi-part series.

The parts will grow just as a plant does.

Part 1: Sowing Seeds, will tell the stories of the beginnings of relationships, how I approach meeting new people, how I develop collaborations early in the process, and how sometimes placing seeds doesn’t always need to result in seedlings right away.

Part 2: Cultivating, will cover the varying levels of maintenance, intimacy, and energy different types of “plants” require once they become seedlings.

Part 3: Harvest, will guide you through all of the amazing flowers, fruits, and beauty which develop after some time.

Finally, Part 4: Invasives and Neighbours, will be a lighthearted final chapter in the challenges that the “plants” you may not choose to grow pose as they take up time and space in your garden.

I will release them as they finish, as with most of my projects, with no set schedule or timeline, in order to ensure I am satisfied to how they’ve taken shape.

Of course, they will have photos, as many of the stories, and analogies, stem from the plant life I have been inspired by in the neighborhoods. I also hope to offer opportunities for you to self-reflect and work on some of these seed growing concepts yourself.

If this series sounds at all interesting to you, please consider subscribing to my Substack.

I do not post overly regularly, but you will receive the occasional email when I do!

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If you are new to this Substack, you can check out my other sections INS(oev)IDE, where I write about the stories of being a street photographer and some commentary on clothing and style or GENEs, interviews about clothing.

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I’ve always wanted to consider myself an artist. As a scientist (both academically and professionally), I was boxed into the analytical and mathematical for so long that I felt a need to push back. It’s also because I simply enjoy creating, even if it’s only for myself.

I’ve played in art spaces all my life. In high school art classes, sketches in the margins of notebooks, learning guitar, and now an obsession with photography. Still, I’m not sure I can claim the word artist when thinking about my personal adjectives.

When I first started taking street portraits, I refused to call what I was doing art. I felt like I was only documenting others. Their clothing was the art, not my photos. Photography is, of course, an art form, but the way I practiced it didn’t feel like one. Even when people said “I love your work,” implying I had an artistic portfolio, it never sat right.

I am still working on that journey. As much as I’ve pushed back against labels, artist, is one I’ve wanted to be able to self-identify as, forever. This piece is about that journey: what photography has taught me about art, what drawing and painting have added, and why I still feel there’s work to do. It’s also a way to finally share some of these creations. Part of finishing art is showing it. I’m not ready for a gallery, but this digital space lets me release the work and, in doing so, pushes me to keep creating.

Sketchy Beginnings

Learning to draw and paint has been a slow process. I’ve always been the type to have sketches in the margins of notebooks, occasional focused bursts of drawing, but it came and went, and my skills seemed to plateau quickly. I’d start down a path of discipline but usually find distractions in other creative endeavors soon after.

In 2017, on a trip to Italy, I brought a notepad with the goal of drawing something every day. I don’t remember what inspired me, but I knew I’d need something to do on long train rides and during hot afternoon breaks after busy mornings of sightseeing. I knew I wanted to keep some sort of journal to remember the trip and wasn’t interested in writing, but thought drawing something each day would help me remember. Ironically, I’ve since lost that notebook, but the habit stuck. On later trips I kept sketching, sometimes letting friends add their own drawings. It was a way to pass time and quietly rebuild the muscle memory of drawing.

For a while, I treated small sketches as a kind of journal—quick drawings to capture trips and moments I could look back on later. They filled cheap notebooks, with no real system, but the intention was always the same, keep creating in the margins.

Going Digital

In the spring of 2020, I decided to go digital. I wanted a way to preserve my illustrations as I had the habit of misplacing these small journals, and I had been playing around with programs like Adobe Illustrator for a while as well. My goal was to do daily iPad drawings each day during my summer holiday. I’d always wanted to draw digitally, but earlier styluses never felt right. The iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil changed that; even if my skills didn’t match the tool yet, the authentic feel was definitely easy to jump into.

From 2020 to 2024, I drew every day in the summer. At first, they were simple, isolated sketches. Symbols or splashes of color to mark what I’d done. I had no style, but it was more about learning Procreate and treating it as a journal.

Over time, the ritual took hold. Each night before bed, instead of scrolling or watching something, I drew, even if it was just 10 minutes. Some days I had the energy for detailed scenes and would get lost for an hour; other days it was a quick icon to mark the day’s events.

But drawing every day meant learning every day. YouTube tutorials taught me about form, color theory, and layer management. Wanting to get better meant observing the world in a new and more purposeful way. Slowly, I grew more ambitious, filling the canvas with fuller compositions instead, rather than sticking with the small sketches.

Photography was teaching me alongside drawing. The same lessons could be applied cross-discipline; composition, symmetry, colour, depth of field. The hours I poured into photography sharpened my eye, but also built confidence: composing quickly and editing fluidly were becoming a reason I could produce so effectively. Practice was the art and the tool.

Each fall I’d set the iPad aside, sometimes for weeks but occasionally would be inspired to add an illustration here and there. After two years using Procreate I was comfortable enough to experiment and draw inspiration from other artists more intentionally.

My sketches became less about documenting the day and more about learning how to make cohesive illustrations and dig into the tool further. The quick symbols had grown monotonous. Too many days looked the same: stroller walks, coffee runs, photo walks, runs logged. To avoid complacency, I shifted fully from journal entries to complete scenes. That shift forced me to think about foreground and background, perspective and detail. Sometimes I planned with small sketches, other times I worked directly from photos or just created from memory, but the challenge moved me from digitally “drawing” to digitally “painting”.

It was during this time, that my preferred “style” started to emerge. Like with my photography, it has become a combination of comfort, the tools I am using, my influences, and my own preferences. Having developed a style I was comfortable with also gave me the confidence when I sat down to have a plan of attack. Like with my photography my senses around how to make the images sharpened and what to create, and leave behind, became more refined.

Another Humbling Leap

By the end of summer 2024, I felt I needed to push myself beyond the iPad. When I made the jump from pencil to digital, there was definitely a learning curve integrating the endless possibilities of brushes, colours, layers, but also learning to control a different friction than pencil on paper. As I kept with it, my brain started to think in those same tools. Procreate had been invaluable, but the shortcuts like color-picking, endless layers, quick resizing, were starting to make me lazy. I felt myself plateauing again, both in my desire to keep drawing, but also in what I was able to achieve with the time I was putting in. The iPad also carried its own distraction: too often I’d open it to draw and end up scrolling Reddit instead. Thinking I’d be heading to YouTube for a quick drawing lesson, spending an hour watching anything else. I needed to push myself outside of this comfort zone to keep growing. There was also the AI creep seeping in, I was losing my taste in digital artwork, knowing that at any time I could type in any prompt and get something way better than I could do myself (although, soulless).

That fall I took the leap into acrylic painting and began spending time in the school studio. I’ve been painting weekly since, and it’s been humbling.

Some lessons transferred but painting introduced challenges I’d never considered. Prepping a canvas, choosing brushes, mixing paint, waiting for layers to dry, cleaning up afterward, avoiding splattering paint all over what I’ve already done. Each step slowed me down, and more than once I found myself stuck, staring at a half-finished painting, unsure of the next move.

The Latest Challenge

In wanting to continue my summer journalling/illustrating habit, I decided that the “easiest” way to continue, while still learning how to paint, would be to integrate bringing a small watercolour kit with me.

I purchased a small, travel oriented watercolour set and started messing around in the middle of spring to prepare myself for a summer of daily painting. This felt like one of the most “old-man” things I could ever do, not exactly the “edgiest” artform. But I fucking love it.

At first I started to just learn the brushstrokes and tried to understand the paints, how they flowed, how to mix, and how much water is required for the style I was going for.

I started by working on Michael Marchenko-esque portraits of my photos. Being exposed to his art on a nightly basis reading Robert Munsch books to my daughter, but also having a large collection of reference photos, made this an easy choice, and a great starting point.

From there, I decided to start painting something else I love photographing, car hoods. For my release of my Spring Zine “ROSSO”, I created a set of small paintings that would go along with the first few copies sold.

And while I started to feel more confident in my drawing and water colouring abilities, I was still a bit hesitant to start this as a daily ritual, and rightfully so, the first few paintings in my “journal”, were not great. Maybe it was the subject matter, or it was my general hesitation in how I wanted to document the summer, but my first few pages…weren’t great.

The self-sabotage and denial started to return…maybe I should just go back to the iPad…it was easier to travel with anyways…I had become better at it, I’m sure I’d get back to painting in the fall anyways…the intrusive thoughts of leaving my watercolours at home during our first trip away were very close in my mind, but I packed them anyways, and I am glad I did.

Final Thoughts & Gallery

I’ve attached a handful of the paintings I did this summer. It’s been fulfilling to flip back and see my progress and show friends and family as I completed these during the summer. The descriptions below give a bit of insight into why I decided to include those specific pieces.

They took a bit longer to complete vs. the iPad drawings, but I stuck with it, made a lot of mistakes, and learned a lot.

I would say I am leaving this experience inspired. I don’t plan on continuing a daily practice, as returning to work doesn’t afford me the time anymore, but I will continue to look for opportunities to fill this watercolour book and buy a new one. You’ll see in many of the paintings below, my technique needs work. It may be the dry-block paints I am using, or just not mastering the water to pigment ratio, but I am still working on many aspects, including mixing and gradients.

Finally, even though I now have this “portfolio” of physical paintings, I still hesitate to call myself an artist. Maybe that hesitation, and holding onto the desire to be considered one, is actually what keeps me going. Every time I’ve plateaued, I’ve had to push into something new, learn new skills, fail, find moments of success, but at the end of the day, continue creating.

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If you are new to this Substack, you can check out my other sections INS(oev)IDE, where I write about the stories of being a street photographer and some commentary on clothing and style or GENEs, interviews about clothing.

This is another long one, and was mostly written as a way for me to grapple with how I am currently thinking about what is going on in the space.

I. Introduction

A few months ago, I wrote a piece on Substack called “What Bitcoin Taught Me.” In many ways, it was a love letter to everything Bitcoin has taught me over the past four years — from understanding financial markets to simply becoming better at saving money. It’s not something I usually talk about publicly, so I was nervous to publish it.

The piece had decent engagement, reaching more than 500 readers and sparking a handful of thoughtful DM conversations. It wasn’t overly controversial. For those new to Bitcoin, it likely resonated as a personal story about money and millennial financial struggle. For those already into Bitcoin, there probably wasn’t much they hadn’t heard before.

What interests me now, though, is the third group — the people who are aware of Bitcoin, but continue to resist it, sometimes passionately. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I’m starting to notice that the reasons people are turned off may go beyond the usual tropes — Silk Road, volatility, crime, cypherpunks. There’s something deeper at play.

One of the main arguments of Bitcoins inevitable success in the future is the fact that many people claim it is following the “hockey stick model” of adoption curves, similar to the television, the internet, or smartphones. These arguments, often made by the Bitcoiners, who, I argue as the fourth group I’d like to discuss in this piece, don’t pay enough attention to the aforementioned “third group” above to actually let this play out.

For example; a couple months after publishing my Bitcoin-focused article, Vancouver’s Mayor, Ken Sim, announced that the city would begin exploring ways to become more “Bitcoin-friendly.” The announcement was met with widespread skepticism. I (regrettably) found myself in a Reddit thread on r/Vancouver, arguing with strangers — not because I’m a Ken Sim fan, but because I support the idea of Bitcoin adoption. The backlash was intense: resistance, misinformation, and a lot of knee-jerk anger.

As I continued to read and listen to conversations around nation-state adoption, corporate balance sheet strategies, and institutional buying, one question kept coming back:

Why are so many people still resistant to Bitcoin?

In my view, Bitcoin is arguably the most important financial invention of our time. But maybe... its brand is just a mess.

If Bitcoin is secure, scarce, decentralized, and increasingly adopted — why do so many people still misunderstand or reject it? Even if you don’t believe in those aspects, compare it to any financial asset since the beginning of Bitcoin, and it’s likely out-performed it (yes, past performance does not guarantee future results, but it’s hard to argue that it hasn’t done extremely well). I am, of course, aware that unlike a corporation; no one company, social media firm, or marketing department runs the Bitcoin narrative. I believe this is more of a strength than a detriment as I buy into the idea that no one entity should be in control of the money, and it is up to the people to maintain this decentralized ledger of a global monetary layer. But, the fact that there is no one driving the ship, means that sometimes the loudest voices, are the ones tied to the name of Bitcoin, whether we like it or not.

For average consumers, it often comes down to narrative.

In this article, I want to explore that narrative — where it came from, why it’s being reinforced, and why I believe Bitcoin continues to face an uphill battle in reaching widespread adoption.

Continuing on the Ken Sim example above, The Tyee, a left-leaning publication in Vancouver published an article shortly after called “Ken Sim’s Bitcoin Boosterism Is on the Ballot,” and its opening paragraph reads:

“Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim carefully cultivates a tech-bro image: T-shirts, headset mics, and an exercise bike at work. His current cheerleading for cryptocurrencies is very much on-brand.”

Later:

“Voters should think long and hard before giving Sim a mandate to spend any real money on this risky gimmick.”

And then:

“This mining uses incredible amounts of electricity: close to 200 terawatt hours last year globally, equivalent to the total power consumption of a medium-sized country. Sensitive to their growing reputation as polluters, crypto firms pledge to adopt cleaner sources of energy, but that’s greenwashing.”

By the end, there’s even a full section tying Bitcoin to “Trump’s corrupt crypto ties”, yikes.

Now, I could unpack each of these claims and respond with the nuance they deserve — and maybe I will at some point in an entirely different article. But instead, I want to focus on the broader thesis of this article:

Bitcoin has a brand problem. And if it can’t reach everyday people, it will never reach global adoption.

If you're a Bitcoin Maximalist, your knee-jerk response might be, “It doesn’t need mass adoption — nation-states, corporations, and BlackRock are in now” and really, the rest of this writing is for you. If you’re the “I agree with everything written in the Tyee”, then maybe start with my previous article.

Here’s my counterpoint to the Maxi’s:
Even the adoption curves that Bitcoiners love to cite — cell phones, the internet, televisions — all succeeded because they eventually reached everyone. Sure, they faced doubters early on. But their appeal grew, and the companies driving them figured out how to reach the masses. They hit escape velocity.

Bitcoin isn’t there yet. And with the people currently steering its public image, I’d argue it may take longer than many expect.

Perception shapes adoption. And adoption shapes destiny.

Bitcoin doesn’t just have a branding issue. It has a perception crisis — one that’s pushing people away before they ever get a chance to understand it.

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II. Political Entanglement and the Freedom Paradox

As I mentioned in the introduction, soon after I finally took the plunge and publicly professed my interest and appreciation for Bitcoin, the political alignments and motives started to muddy my perception.

I’m a big fan of Bitcoin (obviously), but maybe I am holding it as an ideal image in my own mind as I’ve become more and more entrenched in learning about it from the strongly opinionated community.

Lately, I’ve had to ask myself a difficult question:
Why are so many of Bitcoin’s loudest supporters the people I least want to be aligned with?

Trump. Bukele. Putin. Musk, Ken Sim.

These are, for better or for worse, what the general public sees as the faces of Bitcoin right now.

Every time I see the Trump name tied with Bitcoin or “crypto” it kills me — not because I doubt the protocol, but because I know what that does to the “brand”. It reinforces the idea that Bitcoin is just another plaything of the powerful. Another tool for grifters and strongmen to spin their image. Bitcoin already has enough trouble shaking its shady past that many continue to cite as its drawbacks and reasons not to adopt it. Bitcoin’s early history doesn’t help. It was born in the shadows — with anonymous developers, a pseudonymous founder, and an underground culture of Cypherpunks and privacy maximalists. An image I personally find inspiring, but many may find troubling. Add in the Silk Road, the Mt. Gox collapse, the Sam Bankman Fried fiasco and years of headlines tying Bitcoin to crime, hacks, and scams — and that’s how the mainstream got introduced.

Most people never updated their understanding after that first impression and won’t if the image continues to be attached to these polarizing individuals.

If your first exposure is Trump talking about “mining the rest of the Bitcoin in America” or Bukele waving a flag while silencing dissent — you’re probably not going to download a wallet and start experimenting with Lightning, especially if you already hate those people.

A bit more on Trump… his name, and his son's name, is now tightly tied to crypto…and unfortunately (to me) Bitcoin. Whether it's through self-serving endorsements, rumored “strategic reserves,” or ugly attempts to launch NFTs and “crypto coins,” it’s clear he sees Bitcoin as a political and cultural tool — not as a decentralized revolution. Let’s not forget, the man bankrupted many casinos…CASINOS. You cannot tell me he understands the first thing about tokenomics, seed phrases, multi-sig, or the beauty of a decentralized network. Let’s not forget, the strategic reserve is currently being funded by seized assets…how “free” is that. When will they start finding political opponents and opinionated dissidents and seizing their assets to add to their SR, that would be a “budget-neutral” approach…wouldn’t it? My question continues to be, what will that do to public perception?

I get why Bitcoiners love to see Bitcoin on the main stage and seeing the POTUS speaking about Bitcoin. This was something they could have never imagined even four years ago. But, it has become oxymoronic to me to continue hearing Bitcoiners talk about “freedom money” and simultaneously back Trump's policies, while he pulls the most anti-freedom moves in history, socially speaking. Mass deportations without due process, expansion of detention facilities, the erosion of civil rights protections, and the suppression of political dissent don’t sound very “freedom” to me at this point.

Then there’s Nayib Bukele, who at one point was the poster child for Bitcoin’s potential. Young, slick, forward-thinking. He framed Bitcoin as a path to freedom. But now? He’s imprisoning innocent people — including Americans — without due process, and cozying up to Trump like a loyal apprentice. He also reverse course with regards to Bitcoin to cozy up to the IMF again. What happens when it turns out that he is taking payment for these prisoners from the USA in Bitcoin? Yikes.

The golden child for Bitcoin has become Trump’s little sidekick and it threatens the narrative.

The argument I hear mostly when I interact with the American Bitcoiners who back Trump is often “Bitcoin is for everyone”, which I definitely agree with, and understand, but what I think the nuance that they are missing is that “everyone” won’t be coming onto the network if it continues to be associated with these increasingly violent and oppressive regimes which we are seeing to rise quickly. My read on it currently is that the American Bitcoiners want to see Bitcoin succeed in their country so much that they are willing to settle with some chaos in the interim. There is also a “wishing for New World Order” that may be the undercurrent. Sitting comfortably on their stack of Bitcoin, they are willing to see things get shaken up to hopefully weather the storm and see orange skies on the other side of all of this.

You have to imagine what that does to the general public's perception of Bitcoin, though. Maybe if people were starting to come around to the idea after a few cycles that this in fact is all it's cracked up to be, the simple fact that it is tied to these politicians could harm its core mission. It’s a terrible look. Especially for a network that’s supposed to be about sovereignty, transparency, and resisting authoritarianism.

The Bitcoin community is one of the most passionate and focused groups I’ve ever witnessed, but I am afraid it may end up being a downfall if it continues to only be focused on “winning” without being focused on how and why it’s winning.

A Crisis of Representation

The issue here isn’t just about politics. It’s about representation.
It’s about who gets to speak for Bitcoin but more importantly, who gets heard.

Since there is no one in charge, it’s seeming like, at least to me, the wrong people have become the spokespeople, which makes me second guess my own interest and involvement in the project. I’ve always been someone to purchase and invest with morals and personal integrity, so what does that mean for this?

There are many different groups of people involved in telling the narrative of Bitcoin.

On one side, we have the grinning authoritarians adopting it to break free from the international monetary system and meme-fueled libertarians taking selfies of their steaks, raw milk, and guns.

On the other: thoughtful developers and teachers, community advocates, climate-focused technologists… but the latter don’t trend.

Before Trump and Bukele, Michael Saylor has been able to elevate above as the “poster boy”, quoted and interviewed on CNBC and Fox News, but I bet most people still don’t know who he is, and contrary to what many Bitcoiners think, I don’t see him as the best example. To an average person, he comes off as arrogant, and he often accelerates into complex financial jargon within the first few minutes of any interview, leading people to tune out. Not to mention, his first foray into market manipulation in the early 2000’s leading to a large fraud charge against him.

Meanwhile, on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, the people I admire outside of Bitcoin — creators, educators, journalists — continue to dismiss Bitcoin outright. Hank Green, someone I’ve respected for years, has publicly mocked it multiple times. The New York Times — a publication I otherwise respect — seems to go out of its way to dunk on Bitcoin, especially on the Hard Fork podcast. There’s a reflexive hostility there that feels personal.

And again, I get it.
Because when your first exposure to Bitcoin is filtered through headlines about Silk Road, money laundering, ransomware, boiling the oceans, or now Trump and Bukele — of course you’re going to be skeptical.
For millions, Bitcoin still feels shady — not because it is, but because that’s the story they were told.

This isn’t a critique of the tech.
This is a critique of the brand.

And if we want the Bitcoin ethos and monetary system to reach the people — not just the people who already own it — we need a better cultural frame. One that doesn’t rely on billionaires, strongmen, or memes to tell the story.

Again, to truly reach the upward part of the adoption curve, we need to actually make “Bitcoin for everyone”.

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III. The Myth of Inevitable Adoption

Let’s start with a common mantra from the loudest voices in the Bitcoin space:
“It doesn’t matter what the public thinks anymore. Nation-states are adopting it. Institutions are buying. The game is already won.”

This idea — that Bitcoin adoption is inevitable simply because the "right people" are now on board — is gaining traction in Bitcoin circles. And I get the appeal. It’s comforting. It allows you to tune out critics, ignore public skepticism, and dismiss the messy work of education and outreach. There’s also an air of superiority baked in — as if we’ve evolved past needing to explain ourselves.

We take comfort in being the “early adopters.” Memes on Reddit and Nostr regularly echo the sentiment of “we’re so early,” often tagging posts from years ago when the price was lower and the skepticism just as high. The implication is that everyone will eventually bend the knee, once they see the orange light.

But here’s the problem: for it to be truly globally adopted, we need everyone to own it and use it.

If Bitcoin’s endgame is to be a global, censorship-resistant currency or a truly distributed store of value, then it doesn’t matter how many hedge funds are holding it. It doesn’t matter how many governments announce pilot programs. If the average person doesn’t understand it, trust it, or know how to use it — the revolution doesn’t happen.

ETFs have done a great job giving regular people exposure to Bitcoin’s upside — at least in theory. But if those same people aren’t holding actual Bitcoin, exchanging it with others, or understanding how it works as money, then it just becomes another Wall Street product. One more asset class traded by the 1%, out of reach and disconnected from its intended use case.

Holding isn’t using

Yes, BlackRock is in. Yes, MicroStrategy is all-in. USA talking about a strategic reserve, Bhutan, Kenya, Nigeria, Ethopia, all mining Bitcoin. But buying and holding Bitcoin isn’t the same as integrating it into daily life. The same goes for El Salvador making it legal tender. The headlines were exciting. But have the people of El Salvador widely adopted Bitcoin in practice? Not really. Most still use dollars. With 8 out of 10 people not even owning it. The same is true for institutions — the play is speculative. Strategic. My issues with the USA and El Salvador being at the helm of the conversation will be explored further in the section below.

Bitcoin may be reaching the balance sheets of the world. But it’s still far from people’s wallets.

What adoption actually looks like

Smartphones, the internet, credit cards didn’t win because the elites used them. They won because they became intuitive, accessible, and culturally normalized. Adoption wasn’t just technical — it was emotional, social, and behavioral.

That’s what made the curve bend.

So when I hear people say mass adoption no longer matters, I push back. Not because I want Bitcoin to stay underground — but because I want it to work. And for it to work, it has to reach people who have never heard of Michael Saylor or Jack Mallers.

Those of us already “in” tend to amplify each other’s voices, creating echo chambers like Nostr — a social network built around Bitcoiners. While there’s value in community, these platforms often reinforce insularity. They celebrate orange-pilled purity while continuing to put up walls, steeped in memes and maximalist culture, rather than reaching out. I consider myself “one of them”, but often feel like it’s commenting and writing into a space that is only tuned for one or two key topics, everything else just gets sent into the abyss.

Recently, there was a video posted talking about how Nostr is the best way to get people onto the Bitcoin network, as it’s a “first taste” of Bitcoin when the content you post gets zapped some satoshis, rather than liked. And while I agree with the sentiment, this creator obviously has not entered into Nostr as a novice. I have been trying for months to generate some content, speak to like minded people, and most some of my art, but my reach has not gone anywhere, and I would assume for anyone else outside of the Bitcoin community trying to come in for the first time, they would feel lost or disinterested with what is currently being talked about and posted on that platform.

That all being said, we’re seeing real adoption in places where it’s needed most. In the Global South, where fiat currencies have collapsed, Bitcoin has been a lifeline. In parts of Africa, companies like Gridless are powering entire communities with Bitcoin mining infrastructure.

There’s also the incredible work of the Human Rights Foundation, which funds developers and tools that help activists in authoritarian regimes use Bitcoin to receive donations, pay salaries, and transact without fear of censorship. In places like Nicaragua, Nigeria, China, and Russia, Bitcoin isn’t a speculative bet — it’s an escape hatch.

“The Bitcoin Development Fund (BDF) is dedicated to supporting individuals and projects that make Bitcoin and related freedom technologies more powerful tools for human rights defenders operating in challenging political environments.”

These are powerful examples, and provides me with hope that it can do the work it is advertised that it has the ability to do. These are the stories I’d like to see covered more, and these are the types of projects that continue to give me hope that Bitcoin can actually change the world for the better.

Jack Dorsey, quietly right

I have many examples of people in the space who continue to inspire me, many which I mentioned in the first bit of writing. Lately though there’s one person who seems to understand the bigger picture in the same way I am seeing it and has been vocal about it and has received some pushback. Jack Dorsey. He’s spent years quietly pushing for Bitcoin adoption at the grassroots level — not by shouting “have fun staying poor,” but by building actual tools and businesses focused on Bitcoin. Cash App made buying Bitcoin feel as casual as buying coffee and the newest project “Ocean” is aiming to continue to push the decentralization of Bitcoin mining.

Dorsey recently said something that perfectly captures this tension. In a podcast interview, when asked what could cause Bitcoin to fail, he replied:

“I think it has to be payments for it to be relevant… otherwise it’s just something you kind of buy and forget and only use in emergency situations or when you want to get liquid again.”

He went on to say that Bitcoin can still fail — not by being hacked or banned — but by becoming irrelevant. And the only thing that keeps it relevant, in his view, is making it usable for everyday payments. Simple, fast, accessible tools. Real competition for Visa and Mastercard.

In other words: Bitcoin’s survival isn’t guaranteed by speculation. It’s earned through utility.

And right now, that utility isn’t where it needs to be — not yet.

V. Why the Masses Still Don’t Get It

The last major hurdle I see — and maybe the biggest one — is the multi-peak challenge of educating people on Bitcoin, which, thankfully there are always many people thinking about and working on, but I thought I would explain my own views on it here.

Most of the solutions I see today, such as The Bitcoin Way and Onramp are usually focused on high net-wealth individuals or companies looking to add Bitcoin to the balance sheet. For us “regular folk”, we often rely on hearing about it through the grapevine, maybe catching something on TV, from a friend, or on Reddit. Again, reinforcing my point that the current “entry points”are shrouded in bad branding.

Entering into the space is overwhelming for even the most astute

It’s not just about explaining money. Or explaining tech. It’s about catching someone at the intersection of two very difficult spaces:

• They have to already be questioning how our financial system works.

• They have to not get overwhelmed by the technical layer Bitcoin requires.

That's a small Venn diagram overlap — and it's getting even smaller.

With more and more people living paycheck to paycheck, convincing them to invest in a “new monetary system” is a tough sell. Most people aren't looking for revolution. They're looking to pay rent next month. The pitch for Bitcoin — sovereignty, decentralization, hard money — sounds abstract when you’re staring down bills and inflation.

And even if someone is curious, they run headfirst into the second wall: tech overwhelm.

Bitcoin demands more of you than most systems. Memorizing seed phrases. Managing private keys. Understanding wallets, nodes, and block confirmations. All which are not necessary if you are simply going to buy an ETF, but as I mentioned above, the ideal scenario is everyone on the network. Most people struggle just remembering their Netflix password. Now we’re asking them to be their own bank? To master personal custody? It’s daunting — and it stops a lot of potential adopters cold.

Even the communities that should be onboarding newcomers — like Nostr, or the Bitcoin subreddit — often feel closed off. There’s still a culture of arrogance, memes, and inside jokes. Instead of welcoming the curious, it sometimes ridicules them.

The irony is brutal: Bitcoin is supposed to be for everyone. But today, it still feels like it’s for insiders.

VI. Case Study Outro – Even Great Products Can Have a Bad Brand

This branding problem isn’t unique to Bitcoin.

Even great products, built on strong fundamentals, have struggled because of poor branding — or worse, because of the wrong faces representing them. Of course, this being a “fashion” focused Substack, I couldn’t help myself and think of a few examples in the clothing world which may display the same journeys.

Take Crocs, for example.
They were mocked endlessly in their early years — symbols of ugliness and poor taste. It wasn’t until they leaned into the weirdness, owned their identity, and collaborated creatively that Crocs became cool again. Maybe it was bound to happen because of nostalgic fashion cycles. Maybe it was good corporate structure and marketing, but at the end of the day; same product, different narrative.

Or American Apparel.
Their fundamentals were incredible: made-in-USA, sweatshop-free clothing. But the company’s public image was tainted by scandal, bad leadership, and toxic branding. Great mission. Terrible messengers.

Or Patagonia.
It took decades for their mission — sustainability, environmental activism — to not only make sense to the public, but to resonate culturally. They stuck with it, slowly building trust until their brand became synonymous with quality and values.

A popular image on the Bitcoin subreddit is often old headlines mocking the early internet or cellphones, and feeling comfort in the fact we feel we are in the early innings, and we all know how those two turned it. But, think about how Apple approached the cellphone, making it a multi-tool, an irresistible piece of technology that you could not live without.

Will Bitcoin be able to do the same?

CONCLUSION

So what am I proposing? I am not overly sure, this was mostly a therapeutic exercise to write about how I am dealing with my own thoughts about Bitcoin, and maybe to generate some conversation.

There are lots of people, building very complex things, like bringing mining to Africa to use stranded energy and electrify the entire continent and solving super difficult problems, like how to scale the Bitcoin network for 8 billion people, or protect it from advances in quantum technology.

But at the end of the day, will those issues ever be issues, if it does not reach a vast majority of users?

One more mantra I’ll leave you with has been adopted from many previous writers and thinkers, and for Bitcoiners, it is “Gradually, Then Suddenly”. That’s the assumption that we are still early to the party, and eventually everyone will be on the network, whether they want to or not, and maybe that’s true, but I propose that we need: cultural translators who can speak to real people — without memes, without arrogance, without politics. And, it needs to return to what made it powerful in the first place: transparency, empowerment, resilience.

You can’t fix the protocol, and that's the power of Bitcoin and the strength of the network.

But, we can fix how people encounter it.

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DiPartures is my chance to write about things that are a far departure from the SoEV project which has (thankfully) brought most of my readers to this Substack.

If you are new to this Substack, you can check out my other sections INS(oev)IDE, where I write about the stories of being a street photographer and some commentary on clothing and style or GENEs, interviews about clothing with the stylish people I’ve met in the neighborhood.

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INTRODUCTION

One of my most popular Substack posts to date is my “Semi-Scientific Guide to Commercial Drive Cookies…that no one asked for but I’m giving you anyway.” As I mentioned in both the intro and outro of that piece, I never really intended to write food reviews, and I had no plans to follow it up. However, soon after posting that article, people began requesting a similar project—but with pizza.

Considering this is a “semi-scientific guide,” I figured I’d start with a short resume to support my qualifications. While I’m not a “certified expert” or classically trained in any way, I think my pizza experience makes me more than capable of offering a thoughtful review of the slices available on Commercial Drive.

The Resume:

• I’m of Italian heritage—birthday parties and holidays almost always included some kind of pizza on the table.

• I started working at a pizza-focused (kids) restaurant (Choo-Choo Charlie’s) when I was 15, in Ontario. I began as a dishwasher and food runner but eventually moved into the kitchen where I focused on the pizza. By the end of my time there, I was managing orders and prepping much weekly dough and sauce myself.

• I worked at Jasper Pizza Place for four summer seasons, eventually moving from server to front-of-house manager.

• Most importantly: in 2019, I lost a bet that required me to eat 365 slices of pizza in a year—which I completed with many days to spare.

• I estimate I’ve walked over 3,000 km on Commercial Drive over the last eight years.

The purpose of this guide is to break down each pizza slice available on Commercial Drive and offer insights into where you might find the one that’s right for you.

For those unfamiliar with the area, Commercial Drive in East Vancouver has long been known as the city’s “Little Italy.” It became home to many Italian and Portuguese immigrants following World War II. Today, the neighborhood is one of the most diverse in the city, but it still carries its Italian roots proudly, with numerous cafés, pizza joints, red/white/green crosswalks, and the annual June street festival “Italian Day”.

METHODOLOGY:

For this project, I chose to focus exclusively on places where you can buy pizza by the slice, located on or very near Commercial Drive. There are more pizza spots in the neighborhood (Industry Apizza, Marcello’s, Via Tevere, Famoso, Frank’s, Sunrise, La Tana), but since they don't offer pizza by the slice, they weren’t included in this round.

That decision was intentional—by-the-slice pizza is how I usually consume pizza on the Drive. I’m often walking, photographing, or on the move, so grabbing one or two slices and carrying on fits the rhythm of how I experience the area. If there’s interest, I may follow this up with a full dine-in review series in the future.

For consistency, I ordered a cheese slice from each spot—no toppings, no extras. I generally ate slices between 11:30 a.m. and 3:00 p.m., and paid between $4.00 and $6.00 per slice (including a 15% tip). I didn’t include prices below, since they were all in roughly the same range.

Like the cookie guide, I broke down each slice into four main “attributes” for scoring: cheese, sauce, crust, and balance. I recorded my thoughts in real time, either typing or speaking them into ChatGPT during or immediately after eating. This helped me collect my notes while the slice was fresh—both literally and figuratively. (With the cookie guide, I was handwriting everything, and later had to re-interpret what I meant.)

All slices were eaten at or very near the place they were purchased.

The restaurants included in this study (listed South to North) are:

• Yummy Slice

• Uncle Fatih’s

• Megabite

• La Pache

• Fire

• Four Brothers

• Auntie Jen’s

• Don’t Argue (Soccavo)

• Pizza Garden

ESTABLISHING MY BIAS & ATTRIBUTE BREAKDOWN:

As with the cookie guide, I’m not naming a “best” slice or creating a ranking. This is simply an analysis of each slice based on my own preferences and observations. I really did try to approach this believing that “all slices are beautiful.” Unfortunately, as you’ll see, that didn’t hold up.

To give this some context, I think it’s important to lay out my own personal biases—what I consider the ideal slice—and pay homage to a place that defined it for me: the original Don’t Argue on Main Street.

There’s a lot of nostalgia wrapped up in that memory. The minimalist aesthetic, the staff, the music, the way the sun hit the patio just after 5 p.m.—and, of course, the pizza. My wife and I went often, both before and after moving to Vancouver, and I visited frequently on photo walks. During the year I had to eat 365 slices of pizza, Don’t Argue was closing its doors under the original ownership. Needless to say, I went a lot to take it all in.

To me, those slices were perfect.
They had:
a) quality ingredients
b) a dough made with care and long fermentation
c) perfect ratios of sauce, crust, cheese, and oil
d) a crisp but forgiving bake, perfect for folding

People often say pizza is “simple,” but simplicity only works when every part is done well in harmony with one another.

Attribute Breakdown:

Cheese

I like good coverage—whether it’s slices of mozzarella in a more Neapolitan or Margherita style, or shredded low-moisture. Every bite should have some cheese.
It should be fresh and well-cooked, with small bubbles or light browning. Too much cheese will overpower the slice, too little feels like a mistake.

Sauce

I prefer a sauce that’s been processed or cooked down—not the ultra-fresh, chunky kind with visible skins or watery consistency.
The tomatoes should be the star, but I’m open to hints of herbs, onion, or garlic if balanced well.

Crust

Base: Should be browned, not burnt. Thin but not floppy. Crisp enough on the bottom to support the slice, but with chew up top to absorb a bit of sauce.

Edge: I like an airy crust with chew and some oily crispness—like it was touched by butter, lard, or a hot pan. The OG Don’t Argue nailed this every time.

Balance

This is where everything comes together—or doesn’t. A good slice has harmony. Too much cheese ruins melt and hides the sauce. Too much sauce destroys the crust. Too much crust and it’s just bread. Too little of anything, and will obliviously feel like something is missing.

I didn’t assign a score to “balance”, but I’ve included notes under each chart.

Visualization:

To help make this a visually-driven report, I used radial charts to display my scores for each slice.
Each chart shows my assessment of cheese, sauce, and crust, with an overlay of my “perfect slice” for comparison.

Rather than over-analyze each slice, I’m letting the visuals do the heavy lifting—along with a few summary notes. Hopefully it helps you find your own go-to slice on the Drive.

RESULTS

Yummy Slice

Felt more like a garlic finger than a pizza, with herby notes and a white butter base that caught me off guard but worked. The slice held up better than expected for what it was.

Uncle Fatih’s

A reliable late-night or post game slice with soft airiness and just enough structure to carry the experience. Not a standout, but familiar and comforting in a way that makes it hard to hate. Always loved the sesame seed border on the sauce-crust interface. Sauce is well seasoned.

Megabite

Standard quick commuter slice in the base of the skytrain station. Had redeeming qualities, kind of reminded me of Uncle Fatihs in many ways. First time visiting, I imagine they make a consistent slice based on the appearance of the pizzas.

La Pache

A clean, new-school hybrid slice that tries to bridge Neapolitan and NY with some success. The bitterness from the crust (happens when cooking HOT) didn’t ruin it, but once you noticed it, it lingered.

Fire

One of a few slices I didn’t finish because the crust was aggressively chewy and the whole thing felt like a fridge mistake. Easily the worst slice of the project so far—challenged my belief that all pizza is good. I see people eating there all the time, so I am hoping I just caught them on a bad day.

4 Brothers

There was something off about the cheese, like it had been sitting out too long, and once you noticed it, you couldn’t un-smell it. Crunchy cheese texture was fun, but not enough to carry the whole thing. Couldn’t eat more than a couple bites because of the off putting smell. Again, maybe caught them on a bad day?

Don’t Argue (Soccavo)

THICK: Since they offer it by the slice, I thought I would include it: A solid nonna-style slice with a great reheat and solid texture throughout, but a touch of bitterness from the crust char kept it from being elite. Would like to see more cheese of course, but with the volume of dough, keeping the cheese sporadic is kinda nice. Still, it felt purposeful and nostalgic, which went a long way. I always like to mix one of these in.

NY STYLE: Very close to the original Don’t Argue. The quality is always very good, the balance is great, and the ingredients are of high quality. For me, there is just something missing about the crust that has not quite hit the level of the original. Overall though, my go to slice on the drive right now.

Pizza Garden

Felt thoughtful without trying too hard—new age Neapolitan with restraint. Nothing felt out of place and the textures were dialed in. I’ve had a bad experience a little while ago here, but they have redeemed themselves since.

Auntie Jen’s Slice

More known for their stromboli’s, their slice was not the most balanced. Too much cheese, crust was weirdly crunchy and soft at the same time. Bit of a stink to the cheese, wasn’t sure if it was old cheese or low quality parm.

ANALYSIS & CONCLUSIONS

At the end of the day, pizza—like cookies, style, or music—is a deeply personal thing. What’s too cheesy for me might be your ideal bite. My hope is that this guide doesn’t serve as a ranking or a hit list, but as a small map to help you figure out your own preferences, or maybe just give you an excuse to walk a little farther down the Drive. I didn’t set out to make this project, but now that it’s here, I kind of love that I did, I may even continue it to other parts of the neighborhood, or continue adding full pizzas to the list.

There are good slices, there are bad slices, and there are slices that taste just right on a random Tuesday. If you try any of these and disagree, that’s kind of the point.

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In all of these cases, I often find myself coming back to the word “patina.” Whether I’m admiring someone’s chosen piece in a GENEs interview or something I spotted on the street, patina has shown up in more than a few posts. Technically, the term refers to the surface wear or change that happens to metal, stone, or wood over time; think rust, blue copper or weathered fence board. Frequently, I’ve borrowed it in my own writing to describe the depth and uniqueness a piece of clothing develops after years of use.

When I think about patina in clothing, I picture a perfectly faded black band tee, a pair of paint-covered Carhartts, or a sun-bleached hat (spoiler alert).

Personally, I’m a patina machine, which is probably why I love seeing that level of wear in other people’s clothing too.

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The people who know me best will all tell you: I’m hard on my things. My hats fade and lose their shape, my shoe soles wear out, my shirts have holes, my pants lose belt loops, my camera is banged up, lenses dusty and dented. Some might call it an “issue”—I see it as a gift. On the surface, sure, it might look like carelessness. But I’d argue it’s the opposite: I love using my stuff. I like being active. I put things through their paces. And I try to buy pieces that are ready for both the wear and the ever-shifting cycle of trend and function.

I’ve been this way as long as I can remember.

I had friends whose toys or trading cards stayed in pristine shape. Mine always had chips or bent corners. My jeans were always blown out at the knees, and I used to go through shoes faster than anyone I knew. I’ve learned to embrace that. It’s become part of my aesthetic. I’ll wear a busted-up old cap with a brand new cardigan. I’ll keep rocking a long sleeve that probably should have been donated years ago. I buy pre-loved pieces because I want to give them a bit more life and because of the uniqueness of buying second-hand.

I’m constantly working on mastering the balance. Too much patina and I look like I haven’t washed my clothes (or myself) in weeks. Too little, and the outfit feels too polished, too sterile, like I bought it all in one trip to the mall. No character. No history.

Buying new things is necessary for multiple reasons, but allowing a piece to obtain a character of its own through wear and tear should have more celebration in a system so focused on constantly putting out the next best thing.

In the GENEs interviews, when people talk about their favorite garments, there’s always a story tied to when or how they wore it. And you can see that story etched into the piece. That’s the character I love to document—and try to carry in my own wardrobe too.

Now to the part that sparked this post: the rise of pre-distressed clothing.

It all started with a bit of an impulse buy, one I’m a little embarrassed about, but one that makes a good example.

Recently, Puma did a collaboration with the Ninja Turtles through LaMelo Ball’s latest shoe release. A good friend of mine works at Puma, and a t-shirt on the website caught my eye: a “pizza shop” style graphic tee with the OG cartoon Turtles. I’m a big TMNT fan, I coach basketball, I love pizza, and I like a fun Puma collab, so I bought it.

When it arrived, though, something bugged me. The cotton was soft (great), but the shirt had a “pre-distressed” look. The graphic had that faux-faded style, trying to replicate the feel of a shirt that’s been washed hundreds of times, and the red cotton has some sort of “blotching” to make it look like its been worn a bunch.

I was disappointed.

Sure, I like the look. But I hate the methodology. I felt robbed of the ability to build the patina myself. And now I knew that hundreds of other people would have the exact same “distressed” tee. Not great.

I felt like it was trying to achieve one of my favorite long sleeves, my Skull Skates shirt I’ve owned for over 12 years. It’s reached that exact same level of wear (better, even)—but I earned it. I’ve worn it skating, biking, hiking, walking, running. It’s been left in the sun, drenched in the rain, washed a hundred times. The black is now a washed-out grey. And I love it.

Seeing those two shirts side by side really drove home the difference.

And once I started noticing that, I started seeing more of this trend.

There are many examples out there, and sometimes, they can be well done, but often, they come off as just fake. I don’t want to throw too much shade, but I will give one more example to drive my point home. I love Vans, have had a pair in rotation since the early 2000s. But, the new OTW Vans x Gallery Dept collab, yikes. The shoes are pre-splattered with paint and grease to replicate a silkscreen studio vibe. The description even says: “the bold paint splatter and subtle details capture the raw energy of a painter’s studio.” It’s not raw, it’s simulated. It's mass-produced uniqueness.

Once again, fast fashion and high-end collaborations are taking something that takes time, effort, and life experience—and mass-marketing it. They’re offering an aesthetic shortcut. But in doing so, they’re cheapening the destination.

Look, I get it. Not everyone has the time to go buy a fresh pair of Vans and go spend the next year wrecking them in a screen printing studio. But that doesn’t mean we need to buy the story pre-told.

I’d encourage you: develop your own patina. Do it doing what you love.

I’ll end this with another one of my favorite examples. Maybe to inspire you to pick up that special item, and instead of being too precious with it, wear the hell out of it.

This is the Thheme hat I bought way back when I did my first interview with Tom. This hat has been everywhere; washed, worn for entire seasons, dunked in the ocean, crumpled in bags, dropped off a bike, soaked in sweat. It’s lived. And it looks nothing like any other hat. Even if Tom made another that looked the exact same, by this point, it would not look like this one.

It’s storied. It’s personal. It’s mine.

There’s something romantic (maybe even sacred) about having a piece that’s been with you for so long it starts to become you. Even if it eventually falls apart. These things don’t just look better when you wear them in — they feel better too.

Thanks as always for reading.

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I’d love for this series to reach more people!

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If you are new to this Substack, you can check out my other sections INS(oev)IDE, where I write about the stories of being a street photographer and some commentary on clothing and style or GENEs, interviews about clothing with the stylish people I’ve met in the neighborhood. I have a few GENEs interviewed lined up and some new project related to SoEV in the works, but this one is a bit different.

This piece is about parenting, but I promise this is not becoming a parenting blog…

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When I first started this Substack, I figured I’d eventually mix in some parenting pieces alongside the cultural analysis I’ve been exploring. As a high school teacher (with my wife teaching elementary), I assumed we’d have a solid grasp on anticipating and navigating the joys and challenges of raising a child. And while we’ve had our ups and downs like all parents do, at no point have I felt confident enough to write about it with any real authority. Every stage has presented its own unique obstacles and learning opportunities, and just when we think we’ve figured something out, another curveball gets thrown. That constant evolution has made it difficult to capture any one phase, accomplishment, or failure in writing.

The other reason I’ve hesitated is that all parents, without exception, find themselves on the receiving end of unsolicited advice. Occasionally, it’s useful. More often, it’s based on assumptions or misunderstandings rather than genuine curiosity or care. I’ve steered clear of writing anything that might resemble a “parenting blog” because I’d rather not contribute to that noise or risk coming off as if I’m handing out advice.

This, instead, is about something else—about entering a new phase of parenting and reflecting on the generational gap we all experience, both as children and as parents.

A Generational Gap Problem

At this point, I would like to introduce you to the main argument of this piece.

It brings me no joy to write this publicly, but I need to be honest: my daughters taste in music is awful. It’s been a slow, painful decline, growing more entrenched each year. At this point, I fear we are going down a path of an irreversible nature.

To be frank, I can’t stand anything she listens to and most of what she watches. I take my media seriously. I analyze, synthesize, and challenge my biases. My daughter, however, does not share this energy. I’ve spent years curating a diverse selection of music and film for those around me, carefully gauging reactions to enhance my own understanding of friends and families taste. I share as often as I can, and I love getting responses, both positive and negative. She has not been receptive, a positive response to a shared item is rare these days.

I tried to tell myself I wasn’t going to do this. I’ve always understood the fact that parents and their children won’t generally like the same music, and that's not a bad thing. Part of developing your own taste is often rejecting what you are brought up on and I am completely okay subscribing to that ethos, to an extent. I couldn’t imagine my grandparents, Italian immigrants of the 60’s, understanding why my dad would be so enthralled with listening to Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, just like their parents probably didn’t enjoy listening to the “pop” music of their time either. Media for each generation is unique and speaks to them in a way that people outside of that generation just cannot understand. However, developing an appreciation of more nuanced and refined media, and forming a relationship based on the sharing of the joys that good music and good film can bring is something I want to grow in my relationship with my daughter. My fear is that Gen Z, or whatever this generation is called, won’t be as open, as they are so entrenched in the ability to have everything on demand.

What I had always appreciated about my relationship with my parents was the ability for us to share music and media. My parents were always open to allowing me to choose the music in the long car rides, burning my own CDs and my parents taking a general interest in trying to understand what we were listening to. That experience was a reciprocal, I often found myself seeking out what they were listening to and watching, and still do to this day. I appreciated the diversity and range of music that they shared with us as we grew and they also allowed us to consume media “above our maturity level”. I fondly remember so many instances of taking in, what would now be considered “mature content” with my parents. I recall watching George Carlin stand-ups with my dad before I was even a teenager, staying up late watching Arsenio Hall with my mom when I probably should have been fast asleep (there is even evidence of me giving the iconic “woo woo” as a young child on VHS somewhere..), and watching the series finale of Seinfeld as a family, even though we weren’t totally caught up on the entire culture of that show, our parents knew it was a historic event that we would want to be a part of.

My daughter, on the other hand, quite often can’t be bothered to engage in anything I consider “good”. As I mentioned above, I can’t help but blame the way we obtain our media today, maybe that is the problem. Rather than having to wait for a show to be on and having a generally limited amount of options of shows and media in the house, my daughter can access YouTube at almost any moment of the day and go directly to exactly what she wants. And, at the speed of light, any song, from any album, can be brought straight into her headphones with one or two taps, or even a request to Siri. And the things she's picking, unfortunately, are not great. It sucks to be at the point of my life to be shaking my fist saying “kids these days…”, but here we are.

I’ve tried to let her find her own tastes, but I draw the line at letting her musical taste actively rot her brain with the simplistic and pop-dominated discography she's chosen to focus on. For example, she insists on listening to Taylor Swift on the way to school in the morning. While I don’t mind the occasional Taylor Swift song, and generally think what she has done as an artist is quite impressive, if I have to have the song “22” stuck in my head at work for one more day, I might start drinking the chemicals rather than my morning coffee in the lab…

The YouTube videos she watches are worse. They are essentially immature and crappy covers of songs and she watches the same ones over and over, never veering too far from her comfort zone.

For movies, she doesn’t even want to watch the entire thing, rather, she’d prefer to watch compilation videos of her favorite scenes, missing out on the details or nuances available when you consume an entire movie. She also is not interested in any movie I think she would find entertaining, or would potentially expand her horizons. She scoffs at some of my formative classics like The Sandlot.

She will humor me once and a while, getting through one or two minutes of something “new”, but it never lasts long, as she often requests we go back to what she prefers, leading me to either grab a book if I want to stick around, or leave the room to do some chores while she occupies the family room. Maybe it’s what she wants out of the whole deal anyways, some alone time?

Occasionally, she’ll show interest in something I like, “allowing” me to think that there is a glimmer of hope. She’ll take interest in a song I am listening to, or will come sit beside me while I am watching some live performances on YouTube. She’ll nod along to one of my songs for 30 seconds. My heart soars. This is it, a breakthrough. She’s evolving. And then, just as quickly - ‘I’m going to listen to Shake it Off”, and my spirit dies.

Before we get any further - I should reveal for those who don’t know - I am talking about a toddler. I’ve been wanting to write this piece for a while as a comedic take at this issue, so I hope that if you’ve gotten this far, knowing how old my kid is, you know I am kidding, and if you didn’t know, here is the “big reveal”.

The reality is, I understand there are limitations to how much my toddler can appreciate my taste. It’s been so fun seeing her develop her own taste (despite it being filled with Cocomelon, Taylor Swift, and Frozen songs) and I know there will be lots of opportunities for us to bond over the lexicon of movies, TV shows, and music I have grown to love, even though it’s been looking bleak…

The last section of this though is about a breakthrough in something we can share together. And it's been…fantastic.

A Fantastic Future

About a month ago, after a long day of meeting up with friends and wandering Commercial Drive, we decided that pizza was the move before retreating back to the suburbs. We walked into Frank’s, grabbed a booth by the window, and recapped the day. I had my back to the restaurant, but as we chatted, I noticed my daughter’s gaze slowly drifting away from the conversation, her focus locked on something behind me.

I turned to see what had her so enthralled.

Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox was playing on one of the TVs. She was locked in.

Now, that film is one of my favorites in Anderson’s always beautifully crafted catalog, so I was thrilled to see her take an interest. We try to limit screen time in general—especially during meals—but since we were out, we figured this was a special occasion: pizza and a movie. She floated in and out of our conversation, ate well, but kept sneaking glances at the screen, utterly captivated.

We sat in that booth for over 90 minutes. Which, if you’ve ever dined with a three-year-old, is a miracle.

I figured it was a fluke. She was probably just exhausted from the long day, and honestly, any moving images on a screen could have kept her still for that long.

Then, a few days later, during her usual “requesting to watch Cocomelon” time frame, she stunned me with:

"Can we watch the foxy show?"

I knew immediately what she meant. I rushed to Disney+ and put it on.

Could this be it? My chance to break free from the endless loop of Cocomelon and Frozen compilations? Was this my opportunity to finally enjoy a movie together?

We began to watch.

If you’ve never seen Fantastic Mr. Fox, I highly recommend it. Based on Roald Dahl’s 1970s book, it follows a fox battling his wild instincts against his wife’s desire for him to live a “civilized” life as a columnist. He gives in, of course—going on one last heist that gets the entire community into trouble with the three meanest farmers in town Boggis, Bunce, and Bean.

Now, I’ll admit, certain parts of the movie probably aren’t ideal for toddlers. If you’re considering showing it to your little one, be prepared to hover over the remote to skip the “hunting” scenes. There are some mature themes, such as jealousy and betrayal, but overall it’s a story with plenty of action, emotion, and comedy.

But honestly? I’m willing to take that risk if it means we finally have something with a bit of culture on our TV.

As for the stuff thats great; she loves the watercolor backdrops. The music is fun and joyful, even in the darker moments. And, of course, the entire movie is filled with animated woodland creatures. Every shot could be a perfectly composed still image, so I imagine she is learning the palette and framing that Wes Anderson is so well known for passively. And since it’s not a traditional “kids’ movie,” the humor and storytelling actually hold up.

This win, however, comes with a caveat…

Now, she wants to watch it every day.

With a 90-minute runtime, that presents a new challenge—especially when she insists, “I want to finish it.” It’s definitely not as easy as shutting off just one more song of a Cocomelon video.

For those who don’t have kids, let me explain: solving one problem often just creates another and, I assume there is no end to this cycle.

Regardless, there have been moments of progress as it relates to her taste. Lately she’s been open to listening to Pinegrove and D’Angelo in the car, and although ‘22’ usually has to be mixed in between, I’ll take the small wins when I can get them.

As always, thanks for reading, as promised, I will have more SoEV stuff coming, but like I’ve been mentioning, some of these DiParture posts have been my favorites to write, although they don’t reach as many people, I think they will capture a certain moment of time, I can’t wait for my daughter to read this in 10 years…

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Part of my morning routine for the past six months or so has been to play some of the NY Times daily games to “wake my brain up”. I get up earlier than everyone in my house, make the coffee, put away the dishes from the night before, and play Connections, Wordle, and the Mini.

I was getting into a bad habit of scrolling Instagram and Reddit before fully waking up and I realized it was something I wanted to move past. So instead, I’ve changed my morning routine to be slightly more positive, although I am still probably staring at my phone too early (next thing to change), at least I am not doom scrolling…

Although I am still consistently looking forward to doing the daily Connections puzzle, a new game has stolen my attention and enthusiasm on a daily basis.

TimeGussr

I have no idea where I came across this game, but it happened about a month ago and I’ve been addicted ever since.

It is so simple.

Each day, you are presented with 5 images, and the goal of the game is to place a pin on the map where you think the photo was taken, and the year. Think Geogessr, but without being dropped into Google maps, but rather, finding a photo and trying to return it to the location and time it was taken.

From the moment I opened TimeGuessr, I loved its simplicity. One photo, a map, and a slider—that’s it. It strips away the distractions and focuses entirely on observation and feel, it also plays right into my interests: style, photography, and, it’s been testing my knowledge of the history of both.

What I’ve noticed, for me, some eras feel trickier than others. The 1960s to late 70s are especially tough—clothing styles blur together, and in certain regions, fashion looks completely different than what your minds eye has created of what was going on at the time. It’s also been fun to see photos from the 70s of people who were clearly influenced by 50s styles, or 90’s and 70’s, showing the global cyclical nature of style.

The first few times I played, my score was bad, but I was hooked.

Each round feels like a small puzzle, with the added challenge of decoding not just where, but when an image was taken, using clues from a shot in time.

So far, my approach is always the same: I start by scanning for street signs or architecture to narrow down the location, then I analyze the people—their clothing, accessories, even their posture—to refine the time period. For anything 1990s and later, the presence (or absence) of cell phones is an instant clue that helps pin down the decade. I seem to be struggling with the fact that even in the mid-80’s people were still taking lots of black and white photos…or at least that’s what it seems on this game.

Regionally, I’ve noticed some patterns in my accuracy. North America? Usually pretty close. South America? Decent, but hit-and-miss. Certain parts of Europe—France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland—I find easier, but Scandinavia always throws me off. Africa is unpredictable, but the presence of flags usually helps. Asia can be surprisingly intuitive, even though I’ve never been there…

It’s also been very entertaining to think “why was this photo taken?”, who is the photographer, what is the context. With some photos being as specific as meetings inside the oval office in 2024, while others being a group of men outside a factory in the early 1900s.

A Refreshingly Low-Stakes Game

One of my favorite things about TimeGuessr is what it doesn’t have: a global leaderboard. At first, I wasn’t sure how well I was doing without a clear ranking system, I was so curious how sharp my skills were in comparison with others. The competitive side got the better of me and I emailed the game creator. Their response? A global leaderboard would eventually be ruined by cheaters getting perfect scores, so why bother? It’s a refreshingly honest take, and now, the more I play, the more I think it makes the game better. It keeps the focus on personal improvement rather than grinding for meaningless online points. Also the ability to add friends made the smaller leaderboard made it even more fun—we compare scores without the pressure of competing against a bunch of strangers (or bots).

That said, TimeGuessr is definitely a niche game. I’ve recommended it to friends, and their reactions are hilarious—it’s either an instant addiction or complete disinterest. It really only appeals to a specific kind of person: those who love history, geography, and photography. If that’s you, there’s a good chance you’ll love it. If not… well, you’ll probably wonder why I’m so obsessed with it.

I’ll be adding photos to it shortly, so look out for some “east vancouver” gems in the near future!

If you are interested in joining me daily, you can add me as a friend to your leaderboard: mikecldi.

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This little project was inspired by one interaction in particular that I have not been able to shake since the day it happened.

I’ve been taking photos of cars for about as long as I’ve been taking photos of people. There are always interesting older vehicles in the neighborhood; generally they seem to be relics that have stood the test of time and continue to be daily beaters for the characters that drive them, or, are cherished collectors items that get taken out once or twice the year to showboat in an eclectic neighborhood like Commercial or Main. Regardless of the reason they still exist, my eye has always been drawn to an older car. Super preserved or super rusted out, either way, if it has some sort of character, I’ll stop and take a few snaps to see what comes out. I can’t say I’m a huge “car guy”, but I’ve always had an appreciation for engineering and design. I’ve also appreciated the ability for certain items to stand the test of time. To see these older cars still driving around is a testament to either the quality of their build, or the quality of the care to maintain them this long…or maybe a mix of both.

At this point I have a folder of hundreds of these types of photos, and every time I take one, I always think back to a particular interaction.

On the surface, this will not seem like the most profound or exciting event, but what I find fascinating is how one small mundane interaction was able to stay in my brain for so long, culminating in this small project.

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The Interaction

It was a rainy spring afternoon and I was running a few errands on Commercial. As usual, I brought my camera for the off chance that the rain would stop and I could snap a few photos.

There was a classic car parked out front of The Drive Skateshop and the beads of rain were sitting perfectly on the headlight hood. I quickly took out my camera to try and snap a few photos without my camera getting too wet. As I was looking through the view finder, I could sense someone stopping beside me to also admire the vehicle I was shooting. This of course is not a rare occurrence; often when I stop to take a photo of a car others are taking a look as well, sometimes even offering a small bit of conversation…

“yea, she’s a beaut, hey?”,

“oh, my dad used to have one of those, but wasn’t as nice as this one!”

or the classic line from the owner if they are close by and see me snap a photo;

“hey bud, that’ll be five bucks.”

On this specific instance, I was trying to be quick as I didn’t want to get my camera wet, so I didn’t pick my head up as the person approached. He stumbled close to me and said bluntly…

“fucking right, you should be taking photos of this beaut…”

Thinking it was his car (and hoping he wasn’t about to drive it away considering his drunken stumble) I replied:

“oh, is it yours? what year is it?”

“Nah, I wish” he continued; “but man they don’t make them like this anymore”.

The classic line.

He then proceeded to say the line that has stuck with me and the basis of this entire piece.

“Every new car today, they all look like fuckin’ used bars of soap”.

As he finished his sentence, which at the time, seemed just like a simple and funny observation, he pointed out to the street where a white Tesla and Honda Civic were waiting at the stop sign to make left turns. And then it hit me.

Holy shit, this guy is onto something.

“Appreciate this one, cause it’s the peak.” And he stammered off to find his next beer I am sure.

Since that day, it’s been impossible for me to not to see these bars of soap everywhere.

With the dominance of the “mid size SUVs” in North America, the rise of the Tesla and the copycats that have come after and for some reason the popularity of the colour white for a new car, you’re going to have a tough time not seeing this every time you’re on the street now.

Now, of course, before we go any further, I understand the need for these cars to be smooth as a used bar of soap. The aerodynamic design of vehicles over the last 20 years has been developed to increase efficiency by decreasing drag and long with the general nature of corporate America adopting “winning formulas” it makes sense why we see this ubiquitous shape. Especially when it comes to electric cars which are heavier (from the battery), there is a need to decrease the amount of wind resistance the vehicle experiences on the road.

That statement really brought forward what I appreciate about these classic cars and added a certain…highlight to the details. The more I find them, the more I appreciate the uniqueness in their designs, the risks that those engineers at the time have made, and some of the bold choices that came with it.

Ever since that day, I’ve continued to think about it. It was such a direct observation that illustrated the change in culture both in the statement made and in our mutual contrasting observation on the street.

From that point forward it has always been a goal of mine; to create a car bar of soap.

So, with a chemistry lab and 3D printer at my disposal, I came up with this project to push my own abilities in both making soap, 3D modeling, and 3D printing.

Here is a bit of the journey to get the final product…

The Model 3…

I started working on this project over two years ago. It has been something I keep meaning to get to, but always got distracted or hit some sort of roadblock that made me lose interest and say to myself “I’ll do it later”. Something I personally avoid doing, but in this case, as it was such a pet project I felt no need to rush through it.

I originally picked the Model 3 as the model for the soap. For me, it is the soapiest looking car right now. I also would love to take any opportunity to “clown” Elon, and it is wild to think how far he has fallen in my personal opinion, but we’ll save that for another article…

My original procedure for making this bar of soap was:

1. Find a free 3D model online

2. Make an inverse “shell” of the model

3. Print that shell

4. Make soap using olive oil and NaOH

5. Fill shell with soap mixture

6. Cure

I had looked for models online instead of 3D printing a model, but they were either the wrong size, or over $100…so I went the 3D printing route.

The first few steps were pretty straight forward. I don’t have the most “advanced” modelling and 3D printing skills, but I was able to get the shell model using TinkerCAD (a very entry level online program).

It was then time to 3D print the shell/mold model, which is where my first few hiccups came up. Because of the cavity I had made, I knew I wouldn’t be able to print it as one solid piece since our Dremel 3D printers can’t make gaps in a layer without supports, so I decided to slice it in half and make two forms that I could eventually fit together. After a few attempts, my 3D model did not have the resolution required to make a nice smooth bar of soap. Every time I printed the negative, I also ran into problems with both my model and the printer…back to the drawing board.

I then decided to simplify the process a bit. I would use a silicone pour kit to make the mold to then pour the soap in, and I would just 3D print the actual Model 3 form rather than trying to make the mold itself.

Again, I ran into similar problems with the resolution of the car not being smooth enough to ensure I’d have a smooth bar of soap, which was kind of the key to this entire story… I decided to shift to just looking for a model kit or toy online. Turns out, the exact size I wanted was a bit harder to find than I had anticipated and I left this project for almost a year.

As time passed, I found myself still taking photos of cars, and still always thinking about that interaction, so I was re-inspired to try again, with a new plan in mind.

One night, as I was browsing eBay, I decided to see if I could find a die-cast model of a Model 3, and to my surprise I found the exact palm size I was hoping for, and it was very cheap, I guess some fan-boys of Musk have started to fall off the bandwagon in time for me to get my hands on one for this project.

When it finally came in, I ordered a silicone form making kit and proceeded to get the materials ready to make a mold. As I was looking online for tips and tricks in making this type of project, I also discovered you could buy soap that was specifically made to be melted into forms, again, simplifying the process. Sure I could have taken the time to make my own soap, something I’ve done in the chemistry lab in years past, but this would allow me to focus more on making the smoothest and soapiest Model 3 possible.

I made a box from some scrap plastic and a hot glue gun, and glued the model with a spacer at the bottom so I would have an entry point to eventually pour the melted soap. From there, I filled the box and car model with silicone, let it cure, cut it in half to remove the model, and then reassembled simply with some tape.

All these steps went pretty flawlessly considering how poor the first half of my attempts were. Finally it was time to melt and pour the soap. After a couple hours it was done and I finally had my Model 3 bar of soap.

The last step, of course, was to use this bar of soap, to really soften the edges and epitomize the line that has stuck with me for so long.

Some Final Notes

Finally, a few years later, this whole process has come into a full circle hypocritical climax.

When I first started putting some thoughts down about this project, I owned one car, my old reliable, 2011 VW Golf. I had been driving and cherishing that thing for years at this point, driving it across the country and back and forth through the mountains dozens of times. It was our daily commuter when we lived in the city and had served us very well up until this point. Economical, low maintenance, and roomy enough for two.

Then came the baby, a move to the suburbs, and a need for a second car. It would help simplify things and also help to extend the life of our one car which was now ticking close to 300,000 kilometers. We didn’t feel like we NEEDED a second car, but we’d like to try to see if it helped simplify our life, both having coaching and other duties at work after hours, as well as wanting some independence on the weekends. So we set a small budget to get an idea of how this would work.

During that time of looking, I felt that there was nothing on the market that appealed to me, and prices of “newer” used cars seemed so distant from what I wanted to spend and I could not shake this idea of the bar of soap now being even more evident in the SUVs and most cars that were bring produced. I loved the idea of buying an electric car, but at this point we weren’t even sure if we needed second car. So I scoured Craigslist and Auto Trader for a couple months, trying to find a “classic” car, that would still be reliable, but would have a bit of character.

Luckily, I came across a 1998 Jetta. Definitely not the attitude and beauty of a mid-60’s Cadillac, but to me, it had some of that boxy “of a different era” look I was seeking. The price was very affordable and it had less kilometers on it than my Golf and for what we needed it for. It worked for a year or so.

Fast forward a dozen months, and I found myself now looking for a more reliable…maybe even electric…car. My (very wise) wife started to point out that at this point, we had two beaters. One that we couldn’t put my daughter in (the Jetta) and one that, at any point, could end up breaking down to the point of no return (the Golf). So we started weighing out our options. Long story short, a few visits back to the VW dealership put us in a deal for a new electric car that we couldn’t pass up given our budget and what we needed.

For some reason, I actually really liked the white version of the car we got…even if it may be a bit…soapy…

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I often listen to podcasts on long runs, drives, or stretches of walks where I know I won’t run into anyone and I can focus on what is being said. I find it helps me go at a slower pace and distracts me from some boring parts of a route or commute. However, there are times during running (most recently last weekend) when my body and mind reach a state in which I have expended so much energy physically, I can’t focus on a podcast anymore. It usually happens on the last few kilometers of a long run. During this time, I often switch to a playlist I’ve made, or occasionally, Spotify's Discover Weekly (SDW). SDW has often been able to mesh many of the different genres I like into some pretty good, algorithmically calculated playlists. There are weeks where I find myself adding multiple songs off the DW playlist into my own playlists. There are also other weeks where I skip through the entire thing… but regardless, until recently, I have always looked at SDW with amazement and gratitude as it has opened me up to so many new artists from places and spaces I’d never think to look.

During this particular run, when I really needed a boost, the first song that came on was right in the pocket of a nostalgic sounding indie that perfectly threaded a few of my favorite bands together. The algorithm seemed to be working perfectly yet again. The drums had a steady beat, the intro was long and spacy, and the singing had that touch of emo that pushed my pace back to where I needed it to be.

As I was about half way through the song though I started to think about some of the accusations about Spotify generating AI artists (See Ted Gioia 1, 2, Fast Company) and I had to second guess myself… is this a real artist? Is the Spotify AI getting so good now that it can mesh some of my favorite artists into a song that perfectly appeals to me (this specific song wasn’t “perfect”, but…is it possible)? (A disclaimer here, this writing is more an exercise in thought about the future of my own consumption of art, and not a blast on Spotify itself. Spotify has come out and said that they are doing what the articles above are claiming, but you can decide for yourself if the incentives of that model would outweigh them coming out and saying that’s the route they are currently taking…)

As I was running, I took a quick look at the artist and made a mental note to investigate when I got home. Indeed, the band I was playing was a real artist and I went about my day, but, since then, I can’t quite shake this suspicion that everything I now listen to, that I am not already familiar with on Spotify, is generated by their alleged use of fake artists using AI.

I started to examine and reflect on my current consumption habits and questioned if my behaviors have been influenced by this constant stream of media, information, and technologies we have at our fingertips, now enhanced with AI. I felt a bit of my old self becoming replaced with this ease of consumption and although I try to fight it in some facets of life (shopping, eating), I may be succumbing to it in others…

I’ve been making “playlists” since I was actively choosing my own music. The progression and change has been fascinating, and a bit overwhelming, to think about. As I mentioned in a recent interview, music has always played a big part of my life, mostly inspired and influenced by my dads record and CD collection and his own desire to constantly curate and make playlists. When I was around 11 years old, seeking some pre-teen autonomy and wanting to take control over what I was listening to, I learned how to use a CD changer and tape-decks to make my own mixtapes. I distinctly remember learning the art of pausing the tape to allow the CD changer to get to the next track for seamless playback, carefully planning which CDs would have to be in the changer to get the right mix transferred to the tape. A couple years later, the world of making my own mixes opened up further when I installed a CD-R drive on my home computer and started downloading mp3s using Napster and Limewire. I would set up downloads to run overnight to ensure I could put together the right playlist in the morning for an upcoming road trip with my walkman. We used to make our own album art, CD and tape sleeves, and share our creations with friends and family. At one point, we had amassed so many burnt CDs they started to take over the space of our real ones. Although the downloading and burning had opened up “free music”, we continued to buy music as supporting artists was always at the core of our consumption. Another leap came when I got my first MP3 player in the middle of highschool that could hold 16 songs, without any external CD or tape it could be endlessly manipulated as my tastes changed week to week. Then of course came every version of iPod, from the scroll wheel to the shuffle. I remember importing all of my downloaded mp3s into Apple music for the first time and taking weeks to ensure the album art and meta-data was correct and “ripping” CD’s we owned to my library to build my own, personal, music database.

In every iteration of making playlists and mixes, I was obsessively learning, sorting, mixing, and curating music. I still exercise this level of curation to some degree today. Despite Spotify’s fantastic ability to put together its own “curated” playlists, or even generate AI playlists based on a few terms now, I still find myself making my own playlists. Either corresponding to the season, to a mood, activity, era, or just energy in general. I’ve been making “seasonal” playlists encompassing the music I am listening to through each season of taking photos as I am out on the street for hours at a time. I rarely go back too far to re-listen to a season, but I am looking forward to a time when I do go back to sort through photos and I can listen to that playlist while I do so.

After thinking about it for a while, I realized that this “habit” of curating playlists for myself is the active and conscious part of the consumption. In doing that practice, I am investing my energy to consciously take in whatever it is I am consuming, in this case, music. Granted, having to go to HMV to buy a record or CD to bring home to put on a tape took way more energy, time, and resources. I am all for the ability to simply open my phone to have the endless library available, but there is a nostalgic feeling of loss in the ease of use today. The habit of investigating and thinking about what songs I would want on a mix usually encourages me to find out more about the artist, related artists, and continue the search for the next song on the playlist.

I am admittedly in a timeframe of my life where I can’t really sit and listen to music as an activity anymore, the times where I can, are usually paired with another activity such as commuting, walking, riding, playing with my kid, or running. Do I miss those days of just sitting down with a record and reading the lyrics? Of course, but I am still trying to integrate elements of conscious consumption. While my curation is not as “active” as it was in the past, I am still trying to take in what I am listening to and internalize, sort, and codify as much as I can. It’s now got me thinking about more of these subtle actions I can take to ensure I am consciously consuming and “fighting against” the gluttonous versions of consumptions we are exposed to daily.

We are constantly bombarded with easy opportunities to passively consume more than we can handle. You can see this in the way we eat (highly processed, calorically dense but nutritionally lacking fast food), watch videos (endless possibilities of streaming services you can watch passively while mindlessly scrolling on your phone), communicate (Snapchat, stories, reels—designed for quick, fleeting interactions), listen to music (the focus of this piece), shop (one-click purchases and algorithm-driven product suggestions that encourage impulsive buying), consume news (clickbait headlines and bite-sized content that oversimplify complex issues), exercise (gamified fitness apps that prioritize streaks over real health), write (using AI to form long lists of things that we do passively…) and engage with art (viral trends reducing creative works to background aesthetics or 'content').

In trying to maintain some aspects of conscious control I’ve reflected on one aspect of listening to music intently I’ve always enjoyed. Consistently when I am listening to music, I am challenging and thinking to myself; who else needs to hear this song. Many of my friends would agree, I am always sending links to songs, trying to gain a further understanding of my own interpretation of their tastes and fine tuning my own curation abilities. This activity builds both my own attunement and engagement, but also allows me to continue to connect with friends and let them know I am thinking about them. One of the most satisfying exchanges is when I say “Hey, check out this song, I think you’ll love it” and they immediately text back “spot on!”. I also love when it happens in return.

Recognizing this shift in consciousness while listening is a small part in trying to stay engaged in consuming art. I know the solution isn’t to disconnect entirely but to engage more intentionally. These moments when I am looking up an artist to ensure they are not AI, speaks back to the core of my listening. These small acts of mindfulness can help reclaim the joy of discovery and reconnect us to the music—and the world—around us. I try and battle many of these daily habits as much as I can, but we are all victims of it whether we like it or not. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve listened to playlists in the past with songs that spark some joy simply pass by without ever knowing who the artist was. I can recognize tones of tracks today from my Spotify playlists but not be able to tell you where the artist is from, or even what year the song was made. This would not have been true 10 years ago.

I have never been a huge “New Years Resolution” person, but I will definitely be working on this “conscious consumption” in more than just listening this year as I navigate many of the multi-tasking and easy streams of media we encounter daily.

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Thanks for reading. I am hoping to get back to more SoEV content soon, but I have been finding these “DiPartures” really fun to write.

If you are new to this Substack, you can check out my other sections INS(oev)IDE, where I write about the stories of being a street photographer and some commentary on clothing and style or GENEs, interviews about clothing, on my main page.

This is by far, my longest post ever, and I appreciate you being here and taking interest!

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Pre-Introduction

To be honest, I’m incredibly nervous to publish this. I haven’t shared much publicly about my fascination with Bitcoin. If you’re in my small circle of close friends, you’ve definitely heard me sneak in an endorsement here or there, but it’s not something I’ve talked about on social media apart from one or two reposts of podcasts that I listen to, which were met with mixed reactions.

After four years of reading, watching, listening, and investing, I feel like it’s time to share my thoughts.

A lot of this writing has also been prompted by an exploration of my past and my position as a millennial now, and where I think we need to go in the future.

This is, by far, the longest piece of writing I have produced since my Masters of Arts thesis. If you’d like to jump around, I’ve included a Table of Contents below.

Before we Start: Warning: While it feels ridiculous to have to write formally, financial podcasts, YouTube videos, and blog posts seem to start with some version of this disclaimer, so I’ll say it too: This is not financial advice. I am not selling you a get-rich-quick scheme, I am not telling you to go “all-in”. You need to do lots of your own research, but this could be a great launching point. What I will say is you owe it to yourself to understand how your money works. We commit the majority of our lives working, trading hours of our lives for a paycheck, and I strongly believe you should understand what that paycheck means in terms of what that money can get you, why it’s getting you less lately, and how you can potentially mitigate that drop in purchasing power.

I’ve wrongly viewed investing as a quick way to get rich quick scheme in the past and have definitely learned a couple hard lessons. I don’t recommend putting money into anything you aren’t prepared to lose entirely. I’m an amateur at best, and this piece is an exercise in testing my own understanding and a chance to contribute to the conversation around Bitcoin and my generational role in shaping the future of finance, among other things.

Please don’t make any financial decisions based solely on this article, or any one source for that matter. At the end of this writing, I have also included some links to get started in a way that I believe is low risk, at least to dabble with accumulating some Bitcoin passively, as well as a bunch of other resources from people way smarter and more knowledgeable than me.

Table of Contents

i. Introduction

ii. My Financial Beginnings: Saving, Investing, and Learning

iii. Getting “Orange Pilled”

iv. Scarcity: Hard Money for a Digital World

v. Volatility: A Test of Conviction

vi. Work = Money: A New Paradigm

vii. Environmental Critiques: A Path Forward

viii. Conclusion, Resources, and Entry Points

PART ONE: MY HISTORY & BIAS

Introduction

I’ve dabbled in investing over the last 12 or so years. I’ve had some lucky wins, but also some humbling losses. Everything I’ve learned about investing has come from things I’ve learned on my own. My degree is in chemistry after all, a far cry from a lot of my friends who went to “business school”. From reading transcripts of earnings calls to getting lost on r/wallstreetbets and everything in between, I’ve tried to consume a steady stream of information with regards to markets. The internet has been a great teacher but also has led me down some wrong paths. Investing my own money and seeing it grow (or shrink) based on the effort and research I put into my investment strategy has been the best learning experience. As I’ve become more and more interested in the market I’ve also become increasingly engaged with trying to understand money. What is it? Where did it come from? Why is it continuing to become harder to get for some, and easier to accumulate for others?

These are some of the questions that I’ve been faced with multiple times over the last decade or so, and every time I’ve encountered them, they’ve led me back to Bitcoin.

I believe the current system is very flawed, but I also think we might be on the verge of a potential solution.

To explain why I believe Bitcoin is superior, it’s important to share the experiences that shaped my views.

My Financial Beginnings: Saving, Investing, and Learning

Identifying bias is an important aspect to any research based story and I will still try to add some context here.

In Neil Howes' newest book “The Fourth Turning is Here” he describes the generations which are currently alive in such perfection, it summed up my entire experience thus far and I thought I would just include the excerpt here rather than try to explain the general Millennial experience for you. I believe this excerpt does a great job outlining what my generation has experienced, and some main points will be reemphasized within my own experience as well.

For Millenials, as for older generations, the dominant challenge of the last fifteen years has been coping with economic duress. Only for them, wall-to-wall retrenchment has literally defined their entry into the adult workplace. Millenial first-wavers came of age with the dotcom bust and 9/11 and were just settling into budding careers when the Great Financial Recession altered their life trajectories. For the last wave, youth hiring improved for two or three years in the late-2010s, but that respite too was upended by the pandemic lockdown of 2020.

Like Xers, Millennials have fallen behind their parents in real earnings at the same age–and, by some measures, they have fallen behind Xers alone. They’re also lagging in wealth accumulation. Young couples have the lowest homeownership rate since their Silent grandparents in the early 1950s (though at that time, unlike today, the rate was rising rapidly). Today’s gap in self-reported “economic satisfaction” between thirty-somethings (low) and all their elder family relatives receiving Social Security (high) is the widest ever measured.

These are very frustrating results for a generation, which, unlike Boomers, or Xers, worked hard to make themselves “career ready”: following the rules, staying safe, remaining upbeat, and earning so many credentials. Their parents expected so much of them, and they of themselves. So confident have Millennials been in their bright collective outlook that many are haunted by the fear that this inadequacy is personal and doesn’t affect their peers. Surveys show that when adults are asked why they’re reluctant to talk about their personal finances, 5 percent of Millennials cite shame over perceptions of failure– verses only 28 percent of Xers and 13 percent of Boomers. (Howe, 2023).

This describes my relationship with money perfectly, it shows exactly how my ideals and perspectives around saving and accumulating wealth were shaped especially entering my late teens and early twenties. My parents were children of immigrants and they learned valuable lessons on how to be thrifty, save money, and work hard to provide for their families. I grew up watching my (Boomer) parents squirrel money away, teaching me that if you saved enough, those savings would compound safely as they were doing so in an initially high interest rate environment. They saw that if you work hard and save money you could buy a house with that money that was accumulating slowly in a safe, higher yielding savings yields. The difference is, when I tried, it seemed to never accumulate. Watching that happen made me want to spend my money rather than save it. Added to that, through the media and my peers, I was generally sold the narrative of “what’s the point of saving, you’ll never afford a house, might as well use your money for experiences rather than saving for anything”. We were sold this narrative on social media, watching people delay starting a career to travel, spending money on music festivals, touring Europe, or partying multiple nights a week. Economically I saw this narrative become a familiar pattern in every job I have ever entered as well. I always seemed to be in a “post-glory days” phase of whatever workplace I was entering. From an uncharacteristically low tipping environment post-GFC in the restaurant industry and a “tight job market” as I was graduating university, it always seemed like my generation was just a few years short of catching the really good opportunities, so we might as well enjoy partying in our youth as well never catch up to the generations ahead of us anyways. All the good days were gone and we were being told there was nothing good on the horizon. Combine all of that with the general feeling that it was impossible to save money since any money you did put away was making 0.5% interest, not even beating inflation. Turns out super low interest rates were great for people who had lots of capital to work with, but as someone who was just starting to enter the workforce, all this did for me was tell me money wasn’t worth having in the bank. You could look into investing, but being children during the dot-com bubble and then teens during the GFC, there wasn’t too much trust in putting your money into the market.

When I first started “making money” I was working restaurant jobs. I was trying to save enough for the next year of expenses, draining my account to zero by May, working my ass off all summer and then start the cycle all over. My university expenses were low as I attended school on a scholarship and in my last two years of university I had secured a job as a “Residence Don” which meant my living expenses were free as well. The money I was making was simply to pay for food, entertainment, and travel at that time. It was in this comfort that likely led to a few bad spending habits, combined with the narrative I was sold about saving in general.

I definitely bought into the “savings useless” narrative for in early to mid-twenties, travelling, drinking, and “buying experiences” rather than saving or accumulating wealth. But as I got older, I started to pay more attention and this was catalyzed by a few key events.

After paying rent for almost 10 years, I continued to see prices become more out of reach with my savings strategy. I became a bit more serious about saving and realized that simply having some savings in a low yielding savings account was not going to get me anywhere. I started to look for a DIY approach to try and grow what little money I had. I landed on online platforms that allow you to trade on your own at low fees. In hindsight, this was a risky approach. I had no real experience trading, but I had committed to only starting to invest money that I was willing to lose. A couple thousand dollars would have made life a bit uncomfortable for a month or so if I had lost it all, but it wouldn’t have changed my life. I was working full time, I had no student debt, and my rent was low, I figured it was time to dip in. Luckily I also have a partner who aligns financially with my, we live well within our means and she has taught me a lot about living sustainably and being a bit more thrifty.

Around this time, I had noticed a particular trend with the cannabis grey market living in Vancouver. Shops kept opening up and it was getting easier and easier to walk into a shop and buy cannabis like any other product. There were rumblings that the grey market was quickly going to turn into a legalized market with a “medicinal” market starting to get traded on the stock market. Things were really heating up as Trudeau was running for his first stint as PM, with a promise of legalizing Cannabis. I took a few thousand dollars I had saved and put it into two or three cannabis companies. Then, Trudeau was elected Prime Minister, and the cannabis market took off. I was lucky enough to capitalize on the early cannabis stock boom, but I also made mistakes, I cashed out some positions “near the top” but my greed got the better of me with some other investments. I kept buying cheaper companies, hoping for the same “boom” I experienced initially and none of them really paid off. I unfortunately decided to double down on some and ended up losing a bit of my initial earnings. These early mistakes taught me to keep researching, to think more critically, and to approach investing with more strategy, rather than the hunches and hype I entered my first couple of years with.

Even still, after making some decent money and seeing my savings grow, I was still priced out of the housing market in the lower mainland. I diligently kept saving, putting time and energy into researching new markets, trying to live within my means, and hopefully save for a down payment one day if the market had a bit of a correction (I’ll return to this in a bit)…

With my investing stage set and a bit more money in my pocket, I started to look for the next opportunity to hopefully continue to grow my knowledge base and capital.

Getting “Orange Pilled”

They say it takes a few exposures before you finally get into Bitcoin. I ignored the first few signals that Bitcoin was for me, but eventually I came around.

Being a first year university student mid-GFC (2007-2008) meant I was watching the occupy wall street movement closely. It has been suggested that Bitcoin was born from this movement or at least, in parallel given the things people were seeing happen socially and financially at the time. It was too early for me to really grasp it, being mostly talked about on forums and in small communities. I recall hearing about it, and finding it interesting, but I was never able to sink my teeth into it, being too busy with trying to survive the first couple years of university. Bitcoin was just starting to pick-up main-stream steam (for the first time) as I approached the end of university (2011). I had a few “techy” friends in my residence who had mentioned Bitcoin to me (exposure one). I think at some point I had even made a wallet. But with no real money or technical knowledge and not enough interest to want to “risk” in a “speculative” asset at the time which was primarily tied with the Silk Road dark web site, I didn’t dive in too deep. I had watched it on the periphery over the years, never paying too much attention to the booms and busts as I was too focused on getting my career started and essentially living paycheck to paycheck when I first moved to BC without too much focus on trying to mine or invest (regrettably).

A few years later, a colleague of mine would engage in casual conversations about Bitcoin with me (exposure two). He knew I had an interest in stocks so he had mentioned some thoughts on the value of Bitcoin as a solid hedge against inflation, but at that time I had my “risky” money tied up in the weed stocks. I didn't really have wiggle room to invest in another volatile asset, nor did I really understand inflation or financial markets deeply enough to care about something I thought was still a “fringe” concept.

My third exposure was the one that has brought me here though, passionate, educated, and frankly, obsessed. Mid-pandemic 2020.

By this point, I was frustrated with the current system. I was watching the government print money like crazy, when we (the taxpayers) weren't consulted. I thought it was clear that it was going to lead to inflation, that excess money printing and government debt would erode the value of the money I had been saving in cash, but, granted, there also seemed like no other choice at the time. You can read conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory of how big government uses a crisis to manipulate the people, and the money, which may have some aspects of truth, but I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt. I realize our hands were tied with the pandemonium created by a virus which seemed to be threatening and the lockdowns may have been necessary, this will not be an opinion piece on the COVID procedures…

Through both the GFC and the pandemic, we saw the government, central banks, and big banks make massive decisions placing every citizen in more and more debt by simply kicking the can down the road. I don’t know about you, but I never agreed to any of the debt that they have signed us up for, regardless of what ended up happening. While I understand the government is pressed to make fast decisions, I still believe there should be some pause when it comes to making trillion-dollar decisions.

But it’s nothing new, it’s the system we currently live in, regardless of a pandemic or crisis.

To put it simply, the entire financial system is set up to “spend now, pay later”, with no real ability for the latter. If you’ve never looked at the deficit our countries are currently running, I encourage you to check out the World Debt Clocks. You must start asking yourself, how will we pay for all of this spending, and who will pay for it? The largest generation currently alive (Boomers) are now ending the earning phase of their life and will become more and more reliant on the younger generations to pay for their pensions.

When COVID-19 hit, I supported helping people whose businesses were shut down and ensuring the economy could recover. Money would end up being wasted ($54 million dollars for a border app…), stolen, or misused during that time.

At first, I didn’t fully understand what was happening, and I don’t think many of us did. I started to look into these concepts further, and it led me to Bitcoin (exposure three).

Even though I had been familiar with Bitcoin, I still didn't quite understand its value and how its economics were so vastly different from the fiat (CAD, USD, EURO, YEN) system we are currently living in. As I started to question how money works, it seemed like a different kind of solution—one that might offer an escape from the broken financial systems I saw around me.

It was through these three exposures that I finally decided to invest. I downloaded a few apps, transferred some cash, and made my first purchase.

For many people, their first encounter with Bitcoin comes through something negative: a skeptical news article or an overly technical explanation that leaves them overwhelmed. That’s unfortunate because Bitcoin offers so many perspectives to explore. After four years of learning about it, I still feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface and below I will try and outline the main aspects of Bitcoin that appeal to me and solve some of the problems I have outlined above.

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PART 2: WHAT BITCOIN TAUGHT ME

Above all, what I’ve hoped to make clear thus far, is my interest in Bitcoin has driven me to learn more about our financial systems on a macro-level, but personally, its taught me what it means to save, why it’s important to save, and how to resist spending frivolously.

At this point, I will present an obvious caveat to some of my arguments below, and that is, I am fortunately in a position where I find myself with “left over” income at the end of every month that I can decide where I want to put it to save. I understand that this is not the reality for many, but I believe many of the principles I’ve learned can be extended to anyone. The entire ethos of Bitcoin plays into many of my own personality traits and biases as well. I have been known to be slightly anti-authority, anti-establishment, I love DIY and the punk ethos, counter culture, technology, futurology, and many of the other aspects which maybe make me susceptible to fall in love with a narrative that Bitcoin provides.

That being said…

The following sections will outline some arguments why I am so pro-Bitcoin, within the sections, I will hope to explain why I find each aspect so intriguing, but also what I’ve learned in digging deeper into each concept.

The different aspects I will cover are:

• Scarcity/Fixed Supply

• Volatility

• Work = Energy

• Environmental Concerns

Scarcity: Hard Money for a Digital World

As I outlined before, in my own lifetime, we’ve seen the governments print record breaking amounts of money and take on further and further debt. People are starting to realize this is unsustainable, but I feel using the fiat system is going to become increasingly difficult to maintain as people lose faith in our currencies.

The government’s ability to print money, quantitative easing, or lowering interest rates drastically has felt like a safety net, shielding us from economic disaster, but this only works if you ignore the consequences of maintaining the "status quo" through these manipulations, especially when mismanaged—such as inflation, poor resource allocation, funding endless wars, zombie corporations and encouraging excessive debt. Like a healthy ecosystem, there should be ebbs and flows, highs and lows, death and rebirth.

Unfortunately we are stuck in a system afraid to take on new challenges or changes.

As I mentioned above during my “third exposure to Bitcoin”, it was during the pandemic that I finally started looking for something different than what we were currently subscribed to. During the lockdowns, I was waiting on the sidelines with the money I had been patiently saving to have a healthy market correction. Thinking I would potentially capitalize on people who were over extended, just like the generations before us did during their market downturns. Instead, it was just the same old story. We socialized the losses, dropped interest rates, and backstopped everything from mortgages to business loans and simply paid everyone to stay home. Everyone got relief, and those closest to the money printer ended up benefiting the most. Of course, I was supportive of relief measures at the time, the “unprecedented” nature of a global pandemic triggered many fast decisions to be made, but if we were in a stronger and healthier financial position, both as a country and individuals, we’d be able to handle these types of situations in more productive ways. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case, since we’ve been in this gluttonous situation for so long, the only relief is to take on more debt. We see it on a personal level, with people always having to “keep up with the Joneses”, taking on more and more debt to live outside their means and on a national level. Canada, for instance, has the highest level of personal debt in all the G7 counties. We also see it on a national level, with the debts ballooning to unsustainable levels.

With more time at home, I began to dig into what "printing money" really meant. This curiosity naturally led me to the question, "What is money?"—which I believe is the best way to start understanding Bitcoin.

The way I see it, every time the government adds more money into the system, the money you currently own becomes worth less. It is hard to see if you aren’t looking, but most of us have felt the effects greatly over the past few years with inflation that has risen sharply, and prices that will never come back down. You can find many sources online saying this is more complex than that, but if we strip these concepts down to their simplest form, we realize how easy it is for the system to be manipulated. A situation was triggered that should have put stress on the system, making savers and more “conservative” spenders in a better position, but instead, because the rules and supply is rigged, it ended up inflating away any chance of your hard-earned money being worth something. Enriching those with the abilities to take on more debt and causing the disparity between the haves and have nots to accelerate faster than we’ve seen before.

For me, the key to solving this problem of endless money printing, is to find a money that cannot be printed. In my opinion, one of the prime functions of money (which I will explore further below) is to transfer work into goods. When the money is manipulated by excess printing, the work you do is worth less. A popular saying amongst Bitcoiners being “fix the money, fix the world”.

Bitcoin is immune to inflation caused by overproduction because no one—not even the creator, Satoshi Nakamoto—can alter the supply. Its scarcity mirrors precious metals like gold but goes even further because Bitcoin is purely digital, divisible into tiny units called Satoshi’s, and impossible to counterfeit.

In a world where money printing has become the norm, Bitcoin offers an alternative: a form of money that values fairness and a finite amount that can be tracked openly through a strong network of validators (people who continue to maintain the ledger, who owns how much, protected by encryption). As opposed to how our current “ledger” is maintained, behind closed doors, hidden beneath complex systems of REPO markets, bond markets, debt-to-GDP ratios, FED meetings, unelected Bank of Canada representatives, CPI reports that don’t include some sectors but include others, it’s all quite unfair and frankly, shady.

You work hard for your money; no one should be able to devalue it by simply printing more.

The “fairness” of a fixed supply is appealing of course, but it also then changes your approach to what that asset means. If you start to think about owning Bitcoin like a rare collectible rather than a “money”, you start to realize how important it may actually be.

Bitcoin’s scarcity is one of its defining features and what makes it a form of "hard money." Unlike fiat currencies Bitcoin has a fixed supply of 21 million coins. This cap is hard-coded into Bitcoin’s software and enforced by the decentralized network around the world. Every four years, the amount of new Bitcoin that can be mined is cut in half in an event called the "halving," which ensures the supply grows predictably and eventually will stop altogether. This scarcity is unlike anything humans have seen before. While we have had other “hard moneys” such as gold, humans have always found a way to manipulate it, with evidence dating back even to Roman times. While I don’t have the time or space to explore the history of “hard money” further in this writing, if this is something you are interested in, I highly recommend reading “The Bitcoin Standard” where Saifedean Ammous (links in the conclusion) covers the entire history of money and how we got to where we are right now, finishing with why Bitcoin is the ultimate form of “hard money”.

This fixed supply is what makes Bitcoin fundamentally different from fiat money. In fiat systems, central authorities can inflate the money supply at will, devaluing everyone’s savings, sometimes it happens in times of crisis, other times it happens just to “meet” budgetary requirements. While we haven’t seen anything too drastic happen yet in Canada or the USA, our debts are continuing to increase dramatically, which has led other countries to “hyperinflation”, essentially making their currencies worthless.

Holding onto a currency (CAD or USD) that is so heavily manipulated behind closed doors, with no input from the citizens, is something I don’t really want to participate in anymore. That is why I chose to go with Bitcoin. I know exactly how many there are, and how many there will be. At this point, individuals own way more of the supply than any country, company, or individual, which keeps the power in the hands of the network, and the chance of manipulation lower as the network grows in both price and size.

With only 21 million Bitcoin and 8 billion people on Earth, the instinct then is to accumulate as much as you can. It’s a competitive drive that aligns with capitalist principles, which some people may push back against, but I believe is an asset when learning what it means to save and grow your personal wealth.

What I find fascinating is how Bitcoin shifts the focus away from hoarding physical resources, like land, to accumulating something digital, tied to energy. If society adopted this mindset, I think it could even help alleviate crises like the housing shortage. Instead of bidding wars for real estate, people could invest in a digital asset with a fixed supply that has historically better returns.

If you’ve read this far, but are still skeptical, it may be the “volatility” of Bitcoin that has made you weary of its usefulness as a savings vehicle. In the next section, I will outline how the volatility is actually advantageous to re-thinking how we think about saving and spending.

Volatility: A Test of Conviction

If you’ve been exposed to Bitcoin in the mainstream feeds, it is likely to be when it is rocketing upwards, or when it is “dead”...again. Its volatility (its likelihood to spike or fall quickly) is often an argument against using it as a savings vehicle. People often cite its characteristic to drop drastically as the reason that they won't invest, and why they tend to stick to “safer” bets like investing into broader funds which can “promise” a decent return for less risk. I think safer financial plays are still valuable, I personally allocate money into the more “traditional” investment vehicles as well.

But, for me, it was the volatility that taught me how to think longer term about saving, forced me to think twice about spending, and made me continue to research and invest in the network that I was starting to become so passionate about.

Like many first time investors in Bitcoin when I first started buying in 2020 I thought I would take advantage of these swings in price. I watched the charts for a while, seeing the moves up and down within a close range before things started to get too crazy and for some reason, I thought I could outsmart the market and trade it. As most naive newbies, the goal is always to buy low and sell high, thinking you could cash in some quick returns. I purchased a bit, telling myself I would cash out when it hit a certain gain. I saw my initial investments gain value over the first couple of months, and as I continued to research I decided I would hold on a bit longer, I was definitely interested in the idea of a scare supply, but making a quick buck was still kind of appealing as well. Maybe it was my continuing education in the ethos or maybe it was greed, but as the momentum near the end of 2020 continued I kept holding onto my Bitcoin and the price ripped upward. I started buying more, feeling like I had it all figured out. Sending my friends screenshots of my gains and feeling like I had timed the market like a pro. But as fast as Bitcoin can rise, it can fall just as quickly. Luckily, I did not invest any more than I could afford to lose, and I did not over lever myself to attempt to gain more.

At its peak, I felt like a genius. The euphoria at the end of 2021 was palpable to say the least, when BTC reached 50K USD people were calling for 70K, and at 70K people were calling for 100K. I kept buying with any spare cash, stopping investing in my more “safer” bets and the fire of my enthusiasm was fueled by random YouTube pundits and analysts.

And then, as predicted by some of the smarter YouTubers I was watching at the time (Thanks Ben Cowan), I watched the price drop almost 60% in a matter of months. Instead of panicking and selling, I started learning deeper. A few months after making my first purchase, despite seeing a 100% increase, followed by a 60% decrease in a short amount of time, I decided that I would put a 3-5 year time horizon on my purchase as I started to understand the market cycles. I am glad I had committed to this mental model early. It was through learning about Bitcoin that continued to give me conviction about my purchases. I had put in a decent initial investment, but my plan was to accumulate slowly and buy throughout the next few years. I knew if I was able to “weather the storm”, I would come out the other side with more Bitcoin than I started with, at a lower cost.

After seeing the peak, and subsequent drop, the more I dove into Bitcoin’s fundamentals and held on to my investment, trusting my thesis; this was a superior form of money, and nothing about the network had changed—it was still decentralized, immutable, and scarce. If anything, the volatility just tested my conviction. Again, because I did not invest more than I was willing to lose, I was able to stomach seeing my portfolio go from up 100% to down 50% in a matter of months.

Living through that downward trending market also changed the way I thought about money. I started to view unnecessary purchases differently because I was focused on trying to get more Bitcoin. For example, if I wanted a new phone, TV, sweater, but didn’t truly need one, I’d ask myself: What if I put that money into Bitcoin instead? A year from now, my current phone would still work and my Bitcoin might have grown enough to afford an even better phone, or maybe find a cheaper phone and pocket the difference. Up until this point, I was pretty loose with spending, thinking that money didn’t tend to accumulate or grow anyways, I might as well spend it. It was the fact that I was looking at a massive drop in the Bitcoin price that allowed me to question what would be better to purchase, cheap Bitcoin, or some new tech. That shift in mindset—from high time preference to low time preference—was transformative. It’s one of the greatest lessons Bitcoin has taught me: patience in investing pays off.

This new way of thinking about an investment and money in general was totally against what I was conditioned to believe. Most true Bitcoiners tend to adopt a low time preference for investment, meaning, they prefer to hold their investments long term, thinking in four, eight, and even twelve year periods. This longer term way of thinking allows you to think past needlessly spending and the reward is then seeing your wealth actually accumulate rather than the temporary dopamine hit of getting some new piece of tech.

Again this lower time preference, this is not how millennials were conditioned though, so it took me some time to really relax into thinking about things longer term. Now I look at my Bitcoin as an investment I want to save to pass down to my kid, rather than something I will make a quick buck on within a year. For me, this is my way of accumulating some sort of generational wealth. It may be small at this point, but I truly believe that the energy I put into working and saving, is stored and maintained if it is held in Bitcoin.

At this time of writing, you can go back any four year period in the history of Bitcoin, and if you were to purchase, and fast forward four years later, you would have seen a good return on investment. Yes, there will be times within that four year period that you would have to stomach anywhere from a 20-80% drop in price, but if you wait long enough, it has always come back. The return of price appreciation can be seen for a few reasons; the growing network adoption, the limited supply, and now game-theory playing out as many have predicted.

Now that I was fully committed to continuing to work towards “stacking sats”, it also changed the way I looked at work in general. Being a scientist myself, the relationship between the first law of thermodynamics (energy cannot be created nor destroyed) and money really started to become clear. What if we applied that understanding to our own lives, our own energy, rather than just the laws of the universe.

Work = Energy: A New Monetary Paradigm

While most of my arguments thus far have been based on economics, this last aspect of learning/thinking is more of a philosophical/idealistic view of the subject.

Bitcoin made me rethink the relationship between work, energy, and money. It may sound cliché, but our number one sacred asset as a human is time. It is finite and there is no way of getting more, therefore, we should we rewarded for the time we put into our work, as work takes away from our time to be with our friends, family, and hobbies. In our current system, money often feels disconnected from the effort it takes to earn it. It is no surprise, that more and more people are unsatisfied with work. How can you be satisfied with something that may be difficult or strenuous, if the reward for your time does not match the effort. Not to mention, more people are having to work multiple jobs just to keep up with the cost of living. Government and banks can print trillions of dollars with the push of a button, devaluing the labor of millions of people in the process. That doesn’t sit right with me. The accumulation of wealth in small pockets of our society, advantaging a few who can use their generational wealth to take on debts to avoid taxes or continue to compound their assets is a hard pill to swallow for someone who works diligently to save what little we have. The frustration of the disconnect between money and the work required to earn it was really emphasized when I started to apply for a mortgage.

During the time I was trying to put a downpayment on a house, I dove into learning how a bank “backs” that mortgage. In Canada, when you sign up for a mortgage, because of the fractional reserve banking system, a bank essentially “makes” that money up. You are not borrowing the actual value of the mortgage, rather, they are able to add that mortgage to both a deposit in the borrower's account, and an asset on their own. All the while, they will continue to collect interest on that mortgage, extracting your time and energy in the process. This unfairly advantages the banks, as they technically now own your property, can charge you interest, but did not actually put any work into accumulating the wealth to purchase said property, rather, they added a few zeros to their balance sheet and away they went.

What I love about Bitcoin is that it ties money back to energy. The network runs on proof-of-work, meaning that the Bitcoin miners have to expend real energy to secure the system and earn Bitcoin. This creates a monetary system that fundamentally reflects the energy put into it. I believe eventually humans will evolve to think of every process in terms of the physics of energy involved, and moving to a Bitcoin standard will help facilitate that move. How much energy does a task cost? How much Bitcoin is that worth? Currently, the relationship between the energy it costs to produce something and the damage it does to keep things so cheap is totally disconnected. In the future, I hope there will be a better understanding and things will be priced more appropriately, and this movement will be facilitated by Bitcoin and our understanding of the energy involved in mining and maintaining the network.

There are also advantages to the proof-of-work network, which I will not dig too deep into here. Although it expends lots of energy, miners will have to continue to find cheaper, and more sustainable ways of getting the energy required to mine the Bitcoin. There are many use cases for a proof-of-work system, like stabilizing the grid, or using flared byproducts to run miners.

I think this framework could revolutionize how we evaluate costs across society. Gas prices, production of goods, meat and produce, and the value of services could all use some insights using expended energy as the base argument. Tying money to energy could make everything more transparent and fair. It’s a paradigm shift, and while it’s still early days, I believe this concept will play a big role in shaping the future of money.

Environmental Critiques: The Path Forward

As an environmentalist, I’ve thought a lot about Bitcoin’s energy and water usage. It’s true that the network consumes a lot of energy, but I believe right now, the tradeoff is worth it. Securing the most reliable financial network in the world requires energy, just like securing any critical infrastructure. The question isn’t whether Bitcoin uses energy, but whether that energy is being used productively. I am still conflicted at times with the carbon emissions and water usage of the network, but, what I do know, is that when there are financial incentives to make things run cleaner, and more efficient, they tend to happen quicker, and I believe the Bitcoin network will continue to become more sustainable and also help manage the load of our continuing growing and changing electrical grid, both in North America and around the world.

In fact, I think Bitcoin could play a key role in the clean energy transition. By providing a cost-effective use for excess energy, Bitcoin mining can help make renewable energy projects more viable. For example, technologies like Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) could use Bitcoin mining to offset costs during periods of low demand, allowing them to operate more efficiently. This kind of synergy between Bitcoin and clean energy is exciting, and I believe it will only grow in the years to come.

Conclusion, Resources, and Entry Points

Bitcoin has taught me so much about money, technology, patience, and the future of finance. It’s made me think long-term, question old systems, and explore new possibilities. While it’s not a perfect solution, I believe it offers a path forward—a way to build a fairer and more transparent financial system. Within this final section, I would like to add a few resources that have helped bring me to this point, as well as some entry points for anyone who wants to dabble with Bitcoin.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that Bitcoin rewards patience and conviction. It’s not a get-rich-quick scheme; it’s a tool for those willing to think differently and act deliberately.

Like with everything, I believe education is the first step, here are some of my favorite resources for learning about Bitcoin.

I have ordered them in order from “entry level” to “complex” in both media resources and “Entry Points”.

YouTube & Podcasts:

Tetragrammaton Episode with Jack Mallers

While this is not a Bitcoin podcast, Jack Mallers is considered the “prince of Bitcoin” and on the Rick Rubin Tetragrammaton podcast, they do a great job opening up Bitcoin for beginners. Tetragrammaton is one of my favorite podcasts in general and I was so stoked to see Jack on the podcast as Rick has hinted in the past of his curiosity with Bitcoin. Everyone I have suggested this podcast to tells me how it’s helped them grasp certain aspects of Bitcoin better and is a great starting point.

Preston Pysh (The Investors Podcast, Bitcoin Fundamentals)

The Investors Podcast is a greater network of podcasts started by Preston and a few other people, but a few years back Preston started to focus solely on Bitcoin. He is an incredibly intelligent host who has some of the brightest minds in the Bitcoin space on his podcast on a weekly basis. I take the opportunity every Tuesday/Wednesday to listen to his episodes regardless of who the guest is or what they are talking about. I can honestly say everything I know about the technology, network, and potential future of Bitcoin, I’ve learned through Preston and can’t thank him enough. I would strongly recommend starting with BTC 001 if you are interested at all in listening to his work and tune in every week to see what is being built in the Bitcoin space.

Matthew Kratter (Bitcoin University)

Matthew is one of the OG Bitcoiners who is Bitcoin do or die, or as we like to call them “Maxis”. He covers lots of macroeconomic factors as well as adding his own opinion. He brings a very…American perspective to some things, but I really enjoy his simple videos and his opinion makes me laugh sometimes. He also runs a few tutorials with regards to software and hardware wallets.

Benjamin Cowan (Into the Cryptoverse)

This is one of the first (and only) “technical analysis” YouTube channels I watch. He mostly focuses on Bitcoin and uses Trading View and his own website to show indicators and charting to analyze where he thinks Bitcoin is in the market cycle as well as where it could be going. I have been watching his channel for four years now and he has never led me astray. I find him incredibly honest and humble and never sets unrealistic expectations of where things could potentially go. I have also learned a lot about the relationship between macroeconomic factors like Treasury Yields, unemployment numbers, bonds, interest rates, rate cuts, the FED, and many other things through watching his videos.

Russel Matthews

For any Canadians who read this, this guy has been an amazing resource to learn what is happening in our own economy and has explained some really complex things, quite simply. And, he’s a Bitcoiner!

BTC Sessions

Once you get to the point where you are looking into hardware wallets, mining, the lightning network, or some of the more nuanced things in Bitcoin, BTC sessions is a great resource to get tutorials on any topic related to Bitcoin. I’ve referenced his work a bunch and really appreciate his channel.

Books:

The Bitcoin Standard by Saifedean Ammous

This is the ultimate Bitcoin book. It contextualizes and gives a historical background of many of the concepts I talk about above and really allows the reader to understand money and the history of money. Saifedean doesn’t even really touch the topic of Bitcoin until the last third of the book. I highly recommend this book and have purchased many copies for friends in the past.

Price of Tomorrow by Jeff Booth & Broken Money by Lyn Alden

These two books are by two very influential writers in the Bitcoin space. Like The Bitcoin Standard, they do a great job laying out some of the current issues in our financial and societal systems, and look to Bitcoin as potential solutions. Both books really challenged the way I understood things and are both on my “to read again” list.

The Bitcoin Leap: How Bitcoin Is Transforming Africa by Charlene Hill Fadirepo

While I haven’t read this book yet, Charlene was recently on The Investors Podcast and I loved hearing what she has done and learned with regards to growing Bitcoin in Africa. I immediately purchased the book and can’t wait to dig in more.

Entry Points into Bitcoin:

Shakepay

I personally use an app called Shakepay to buy my Bitcoin. While you may not always find the best price, the incentives are worth the slight premium you might have to pay. If I were just starting out, I would open up a Shakepay account and apply and activate their Visa. They offer 2% back in Bitcoin for the first few thousand dollars spent, and then 1% there after. I also use the top-up feature, to add a few bucks on every purchase that gets converted into Bitcoin. I think it is a great way to accumulate a few Satoshis (again, satoshis is like the “cents” to Bitcoin) at a time, and at least you are gaining some exposure to Bitcoin, and passively at that. Once you start accumulating a bit, you can also buy Bitcoin directly from the app. You can also start a “Shake Squad” where you and your friends can earn sats as you use the card as well. It works like a pre-paid Visa, and you can use the balance in your app to also buy Bitcoin. They are now insured just like a bank, so the cash you hold in the app is as safe as any other institution. While its nice to have some Bitcoin accumulate in this app, I strongly would suggest getting a hardware wallet after some time and going down that path. Finally, another fun feature of the app, is that if you shake your phone while the app is open, you can accumulate a few satoshis at a time, and, the longer your streak, the more satoshis you can accumulate. If you use your Visa weekly, your Shakes are also worth more. My personal streak is 400 days, and I am getting close to 365 again! (If you use any of the links above, and make a Bitcoin purchase, there is a small incentive for both of us!)

Fountain

Fountain is a podcast app that allows you to gain satoshis just for listening to podcasts. While their incentives to listen used to be better, once in a while you get a nice surprise here and there after you’ve finished listening to a podcast. Once you are comfortable with accumulating Bitcoin, you can also zap sats (tip creators) for their work, which I would love to see integrated into all sorts of apps in the future.

Bitcoin ETFs

While I am not 100% convinced the ETFs are the way to go if you believe in the decentralization, becoming your own bank, and “sticking it to the man”, the ETFs are a great place to invest in a tax-free account if you want to move some of your savings into Bitcoin. Personally, I’ve purchased some of the Purpose BTCY ETF, which offers a decent monthly yield on your ETF holding. Again, not financial advice, there are lots of ETFs out there and if you want to go this route, it’s best to check with a financial advisor to see what strategy is best for you.

I am assuming 99.9% of people won’t make it this far, and that is fine, this was totally a selfish piece of writing and my way of trying to contribute to the greater Bitcoin community. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to DM me on Instagram, leave a comment, or click the “Message Mike Di” button below. I would be happy to help clarify or point you in the right direction.

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Running Reset

Back in April I posted an article called My Big (running) Mistakes. In it, I outlined my previous year of training and how I was running on a more frequent basis, increasing kilometers steadily and doing some bigger long runs once or twice a month. Although I was feeling good, I ended up with an over-training injury (what I self diagnosed as a stress fracture in my shin).

At the time of writing that piece (late March 2024) I was just beginning to play with the idea of starting to run again. Motivated to learn from my previous mistakes, I did a lot of strengthening work and started to get my diet dialed in.

About a month later, and a few pain-free runs in, I signed up for the Royal Victoria Marathon which would happen in about 6 months time, giving me a nice window to recover some of my fitness and start to train for my first marathon.

This post will be a breakdown of training for my first marathon and outline some of the successes and lessons I garnered along the way.

This is the longest thing I’ve written on Substack, and most people don’t read all the way through my pieces (I see you, the data doesn’t lie). So if you’d like to skip around, here are the sections I’ve broken this up into:

• Diet & Strength/Mobility

• The Running Plan

• Balancing the Schedule

• Training with Friends

• Shoes, Shoes, Shoes

• Taper Tantrum

• Race Weekend

• Race Day

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Diet & Strength/Mobility

The Diet

I attributed my over training injury to a few key things, a) increasing load and volume too quickly, b) wrong shoes, and mostly c) poor diet. I was under nourished and maybe even slightly dehydrated during the last week before my injury, so I did not want to make that mistake again this time around.

I decided to track my eating for about a month while I was recovering to get a better understanding of my macronutrient intake.

I consider myself to have a pretty good diet, balanced, a lot of home cooked whole foods (for the most part), don’t drink much and rarely over ate, so I did not think I’d be too far off in any one nutrient, but there was obviously something missing considering my injury.

It turned out, I was about 50-75g of protein short every day given my mostly vegetarian lifestyle and without eating too many breakfasts (I had gotten used to intermittent fasting, likely a contributing factor as well).

Given that, the biggest change I made was consuming two 25g protein shakes with water or milk every day, and starting to eat more protein rich breakfasts like making protein pancakes, mixing cottage cheese with my eggs, or starting to integrate some more meat options in my lunches.

This enabled my body to have the nutrients needed to heal the constant damage I was doing to it, and by the end of the training I was continuing to feel stronger and less sore as the kilometers amped up. It was easy to consume more food while training since I felt an insatiable amount of hunger all the way up to week 16. I tried to keep my diet pretty clean, but when you constantly feel hungry and are burning 800 calories before breakfast some days, the croissants, cookies, and granola bars always seem to find a way home… I was mostly focused on just ensuring I was going to sleep every night with more calories than I was burning. Considering some days I was burning 900 calories even before breakfast, it was important for me to continue to give my body the tools it needs to repair itself after a day of training.

I also consumed daily electrolytes and took some vitamins such as C, D, and Magnesium. All which I think helped me stay healthy, energized during the day, and sleep well during training.

Funnily enough, being under-fueled ended up again being a detriment in my training the days leading up to the marathon, which I will cover a bit later.

Strength/Mobility

I have come to love strength training and mobility work. I have been doing strength training in some capacity since I was a teenager. Although I have to cut it out of my schedule every now and then because of a lack of time, I always try to find my way back into a routine every few months to maintain the strength I have built up.

Before this marathon training, because I was injured, I went through a “building” workout training block. I was lifting low reps but high intensity (weight), to hopefully strengthen my legs while my shinbone was healing.

During my marathon training, I had carved out Mondays and Thursdays as my strength training days. During the first 5-8 weeks, I was able to maintain that weekly, doing some sort of leg/core routine during those days of the week. However, once I started travelling a bit and the kilometers started to intensify through the plan, it was harder and harder to maintain my lifting schedule. When I finally did get a chance to get back in the gym, I was lifting a bit too heavy and then would end up sore for my runs. I decided to cut back on strength training for the last quarter of my training sessions.

For my next training cycle, I am planning to do a build phase leading up to it as I did last time and then maintain strength training better through the running. I believe I could have avoided some fatigue on race day and during the taper if I had been able to maintain the weight lifting throughout. Now that I have had one full training cycle, I think I will be able to prioritize doing a leg workout after the Thursday session, as well as on the Monday “rest day” as well.

As for mobility; I do a short Knees Over Toes guy mobility routine every night once I put my daughter to sleep. I have added a few other movements as well, but this is the basic routine I have done. This is one thing I will continue to do and adamantly encourage you do as well. I had two instances where I had rolled my ankle, quite dramatically, while running, and was able to continue to run, and run the next day and I 100% attribute it to my work using this mobility routine. Strengthening and lengthening the joints and tendons allows you to move naturally and bounce back through unexpected movements. The only other mobility work I did was a decent warm-up for every run, which you can find a plethora of on YouTube.

The Running Plan

One of the main reasons I picked the RVM was a) I heard the course is beautiful and b) the date aligned perfectly for me to do the bulk of my training during my summer break from school.

Although I have been training and coaching myself and other sports for over 10 years (even being NSCA CSCS qualified at one point…) , putting together a marathon training plan was a bit outside of my skillset, so I decided to look online to see what was out there.

I found a “novice” plan online by Hal Higdon which was in the range (in terms of training load per week) of a lot of different plans I had been researching, but this one read the nicest when printed out and made the most sense given the slow progression over 18 weeks.. The first few weeks already were already close to the training load (total kms per week) I was currently doing as I was starting to ramp back up to begin “real training”.

Printing the plan and setting up a space to see the progress on the plan was definitely a key part in staying consistent. The accountability of having the plan close to my running gear both at home and at work made it always front and center. Being a “checklist-guy” myself, crossing the training blocks off was definitely a key part of keeping me motivated over the 18 week plan (I will touch back on the plan a little bit later).

This plan had four run days a week, Tuesday and Thursday were shorter, Wednesday a bit longer, and Saturday the “long run” of the week. The way I set out those runs were usually

Tuesday - Some sort of speed or tempo run

Wednesday - Low HR long run

Thursday - Comfortable short run

Saturday - Slow or comfortable pace long run with some hills.

Sunday was saved for a “cross training day” in which I usually biked or walked.

Monday and Friday were rest days.

I really enjoyed this plan, I thought it built up responsibly and by the time I got to the “heavier weeks” my body felt ready to handle the increase in kilometers.

During the 35 km run (the last long run of the training), I felt very strong and was barely sore the day after. It left me feeling confident that I could do the full no problem.

It turns out, I likely should have done a program one or two steps ahead for what I ended up racing at, but again, I will cover that later…

Balancing the Schedule

Being a husband, father, friend, and a person who really enjoys lots of creative endeavors, running consistently 5x a week definitely required some schedule management.

At times it got a bit heavy, trying to sneak away for a run here and there, but by the end of the schedule, I was getting up at 5:00am and getting the kilometers in. There is lots of research out there that people who train in the morning are more likely to keep their routine, and I can definitely see why (if you can maintain a healthy sleep schedule as well).

Training with Friends & Variety

One of the best things I did towards the middle of the training block was start a small group chat with my brother and friend who were also training for marathons.

It was nice to get advice, encourage one another on our Strava runs, and “cope” with some of the ups and downs of training. This amount of training is unlike anything I had done before, so to have a safe space to be concerned and have people say they are going through the same thing was very nice.

I am sure joining a run club or program with people on a weekly basis would be awesome as well, but at the time of this training, I was doing the actual running independently for multiple reasons (where I live, the times I was able to run, etc).

The days I was able to run with a group was always more enjoyable, having a conversational run forces you to run at a slower pace and lower heart rate which is great, and also adds the mental distraction needed to get through longer runs.

I also tried to get a good variety of runs in during the weeks. Although I had my two go to routes around my neighborhood & White Rock, I was always open to throwing in a trail run or a trip to Vancouver from the suburbs to change it up. Those variety runs often were encouraged by people also training for longer distances and their company was always appreciated.

Shoes, Shoes, Shoes

Through the 18 weeks of training, I was fortunate enough to test out a few pairs of shoes and I will write a quick review for each pair, and explain why I decided on the pair I raced in.

No Shoes

I ran a few times in the summer with no shoes and I would definitely recommend trying it if you have access to a beach or large grassy area. It helped to strengthen my feet and also gave me good insights into how my form was as I had to concentrate a lot harder on my foot placement during every stride.

Altra - Via Olympus

I purchased these shoes as the first pair I was going to start training in after my injury. After a few research sessions and a Rick Rubin podcast, I decided that I wanted to try a “zero drop” shoe, to try and strengthen my ankles and feet while I run. These shoes promise to bring you back to the “natural form” of running as your foot does the work.

What I mostly loved about these were the wide toe-box, something that in the podcast the founder mentioned more shoes need to have. I have a wider foot so the extra room was very welcome and I felt my toes never hurt in these.

My feet definitely did the work in these shoes. I would finish most runs way more tired in the legs when I was running in these.

I stopped using them around week 10 as the kilometers were piling up, these were becoming an extra workout in themselves. They honestly feel like you are running on hard wet sand (which I did a few times in White Rock).

Did they strengthen my feet and legs? Maybe? But I ended up having to stop using them, and I don’t know if I would start again. The foam is really hard and I believe fatigued my legs too much to be beneficial. I do now see they have a “Via Olympus 2”, which promises a softer midsole foam…I would try them, but I am not sure I would buy them outright at this point.

Puma - Magnify Nitro 2

These were given to me by a friend and they became my “short-fast shoe”. They are super light and the foam has a nice return on the bounce. They aren’t so soft that you feel like you are maybe losing some energy to the squish, but they aren’t so hard you feel like your legs are working too hard, they have a nice firm return and are fun to run in.

The longest run I would do in these would be less than 15km, but they are a very nice all around trainer, and I am not just saying that for Andrew.

Asics - Gel Nimbus 25

This is the pair of long distance shoes I ended my last training block with, so I bought a new pair for this block. I really liked the soft cushion sole and the really soft stretchy upper when I was running under 20km, but anything over 20km, my toes would end up slipping too far forward and become crammed in the very narrow toe box. I ended up really falling out of love with them after a while, the upper just ended up stretching too much and you don’t get a good feel in the shoe after 150-200 km.

New Balance Fresh Foam 1080v13

As I was getting over the Gel Nimbus, I started asking around for peoples recommendations for a long distance shoe. Per usual, my brother (who never steers me wrong) mentioned that he had read good things about the FF 1080s, and that a lot of people like them for marathons.

I purchased a pair on sale, and I decided this time to buy a “wide” shoe as I had been liking the toe box room from the Altra’s. I started using them for my long runs and quickly after, I began using them for all my runs as the kilometers started to really amp up towards the latter half of the plan

Soon after, with about 300 km left in the training plan, I decided I would need to find another pair if I wanted them for my marathon.

Luckily with the v14 coming out shortly, I was able to find another pair on sale.

They have been so comfortable this entire time, the upper is breathable and stretchy but with enough support that my feet don’t move around.

The foam is soft yet still a bit responsive and my legs feel fresh after long runs. I would definitely recommend a pair of these and will definitely be trying the newest iterations when I’ve torn these ones up.

Taper Tantrum

During the entire 16 weeks of training, I can honestly say I had no hiccups. There were definitely moments when my legs were feeling fresher than others, but the constant niggles and injuries that had plagued me before seemed to be strengthened and stretched away pretty neatly. Likely because for the vast majority of the training block I was on summer vacation, able to stretch and be active all day, eat healthy, and for the most part sleep well and be stress free.

As I was coming to the end of my program though, school (work) had started up again, and the sleep was starting to get shorter, and the diet was starting to slip, a bit.

Then it all happened at once, the last week leading up to the race, I started feeling really crappy. Knee pains, quad soreness, ankle cracking, all things that I thought I had avoided the entire training were all starting to rear their heads during the last few taper runs.

This program had a two week taper, intended to let your body really heal up and be fully rested for the race, something that almost every plan I’ve ever looked at had.

What I didn’t know, was that taper tantrums AKA the taper bugaboos were a real thing… and boy did they get after me.

Ashley Mateo has a great piece covering some of the nuances.

I had consulted my run group chat, and some marathoners at work, and got the same response from everyone “you’ll be fine, its just in your head, it happens to everyone”.

With that in mind, I went out for my last taper run, and then it really hit me…

Chest pains.

During my last 3km run, my entire right side of my chest felt tight and it hurt every time I landed. I slowed way down and just figured maybe I had slept funny or pulled a muscle, but chest paints were definitely concerning.

On the ferry over to the island the next day, I had more chest pains. I was uncomfortable, and deep breaths made it hurt more. It had moved from the right side to the left side and I kept convincing myself it was just in my head, I was being overly sensitive and “too aware”, and was planning on doing a little run to loosen up the next day, and this would all be magically gone by then…

Turns out, it wasn’t (I’ll get to the cause in a couple more paragraphs).

Race Weekend

One of the best decisions we made for race weekend was to have my daughter participate in the 1 km kids run the day before. We got down to the beach around 8am and my wife also competed in the 5 km. We were down at Willows Beach all morning, the sun was out and the air was crisp, and it was a really fun and well run event. We all enjoyed it, and it was a nice distraction for me the day before the race to stop focusing on any pains or chest “issues”.

One of the worst decisions we made for race weekend was also doing all that without proper fueling that morning. Because we were quick to get out of house, and grocery shopping the day before was “for the essentials” I was definitely under-fueling myself the day before the race. A combination of being too busy and a bit anxious about my chest pains led me to ignore the signs of hunger, and consume like I had been consuming for weeks leading up.

I had a quick lunch and decided to test out my chest pain on a little run after we settled back into the AirBnB later that afternoon.

1 km went by and I was feeling great, thankfully, I was thinking I dodged something serious.

And then it happened again, and for the next two KMs my chest had sharp pains...but this time I had a hunch, as I burped a couple of times and it seemed to relieve some of the pressure I was feeling.

Could all this pain just be…heartburn?

I quickly headed home and started doing some research.

Of course, if you research “chest pain while running”, every single thing you read is going to say “STOP RUNNING. GOTO EMERGENCY”, but I wasn’t convinced it was something drastic, so I was being more specific in my search terms. “Heart Burn Taper Tantrum”, was my go to search.

After exploring a bunch of message boards and Reddit, I decided the only path to take was to head to the drug store and buy a bunch of Tums and Gaviscon. I ate a few tablets of each every couple of hours for the rest of the day, tried to have a big dinner (but was nervous of over eating, and my daughter ended up eating half my eggs…), and headed to bed hoping that my adrenaline and over the counter antacids would bring me over the finish line in the morning.

Race day

Leading up to the Marathon, one of the common questions people ask is “what is your goal time?”. For the first few months “just finishing” was my only response, but as I started getting closer and closer to the race, I felt like finishing in under four hours would be doable.

I woke up that morning, ate some oatmeal, had a protein shake and drank a bunch of electrolytes while I did some stretching.

I headed to the race with a pocket full of Gaviscon and body full of nerves.

I normally don’t think I would have been as nervous for the race if I hadn’t been anxiously wondering how my chest would feel once the race started.

I met up with my friend and we walked around the starting area for a while and crunched on some Magnesium carbonate.

My two pre-race lessons were a) should have eaten more oatmeal b) should have done more dynamic stretching.

We lined up with the four hour pacer and we were off.

The first 5-10 km were tough, I was feeling a bit of tightness in my chest and the crowd was very dense so I missed the first couple water stations, but my legs felt strong and a 5:30-5:45 pace felt so manageable.

Around the 13 km mark, the half-marathoners turn around and the street really opened up. Still feeling good I started to push my pace a little bit as the hydration stations were easier to access and I was feeling great.

I got greedy too early.

About 15 km after, around the 28 km mark, I could feel a little bit of a pull in my hamstring, it had been bothering me a bit leading up to the race, but I thought nothing of it.

Kilometer after kilometer I was slowly passing people walking off cramps or taking a break, hoping I wouldn’t meet the same fate.

The next hill really caught me by surprise and I ended up feeling a tightness in my hamstring that caused me to slow way down, afraid if I kept up my pace I’d pull it.

The 4h pacer group caught up with me a few minutes later and then soon after left me in their dust.

I was disappointed initially, but happy to still be running, although at a much slower pace.

For the last 12km or so, I struggled to feel good, which was unfortunate with how well I felt when I ran 35km a few weeks prior.

Although the RVM course is considered “rolling hills” throughout, the last 10 km felt all uphill and because I was not running at my normal cadence and pace, parts of my body were working extra hard.

By the time I reached the last km markers, I knew I was in for a sore afternoon/rest of the week. Every muscle in my legs were screaming at me to stop, but with the crowds getting bigger and louder as the meters counted down, I was able to run my way all the way through the finish line, cramping in my calves, quads, and hamstrings as I slowed through the gate.

The course is full of beautiful lookouts, excellent neighborhoods, a forest, a golf course, ocean views, and finishes in the city, but my absolute favorite part of the race was catching my wife and daughter screaming “GO DAD” in the last few meters.

Conclusions & Lessons for Next time

Immediately after crossing the finish line, my legs essentially turned off. I cramped, I teared up, and I knew I wanted to do another full marathon.

Since that weekend I have taken a couple weeks off of running and all the diet discipline and early mornings to let my body recover, but I signed up for RVM 2025!

Here are the main things I will attempt to do next time around, granted I am still in good health and I have the time and capacity to train through the summer again…

In Training:

1. Lift weights and stay in the gym at least twice a week throughout the training

2. Increase training load compared to the last plan (maybe try the Hal Higdon Intermediate level)

3. More hill running

Race Weekend & Day

1. Prepare more food, bring more snacks

2. Start the race slow and pick up the pace

3. Bring my own hydration?

4. Don’t lay down after the run!

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Pre-Introduction

This “experiment” is a two fold activity for me. Primarily, it is to explore the viability for ChatGPT to assist in writing a formal lab report at the high school level. In doing so, each lab section will be opened with a short explanation of how I used ChatGPT to assist in the lab writing. The second aspect of this lab is to explore the CO₂ sensors I have students use in my lab at the beginning of each school year. I have had this research question pertaining to the CO₂ sensors on my mind for a couple of years and I have been wanting to write my own lab report, but have never had the time to achieve it. Thanks to ChatGPT, I was able to conduct the lab and write it within a couple of hours. 

For the past couple of years, we (myself and the teachers in the science department and our school in general) have debated how we will approach the use of generative AI, how we can use it as educators, and how it will affect our assessments especially for lab assignments. Rather than looking at it as something that aids in “cheating” or “plagiarism”, I aimed to use it as a writing assistant. My main idea was “What if I could just tell ChatGPT the things I was doing, almost using it as a journal, for it to then create my lab sections which require lots of writing for me?”. Rather than giving simple prompts such as “write my introduction to a lab…” I will focus my inputs in ways that are specifically tailored to what I am trying to achieve in the lab. This is something that has reportedly been happening at all levels of science writing over the last couple of years, with specific tools designed for main sections of lab reports, such as protocol generation. 

At our school, we have created an “acceptable use scale” which can help the staff and students understand what level  AI use is acceptable on any given task. For each section, I will briefly mention which level I believe the section which follows is, and explain why.

There have been many conversations in education today talking about the usefulness, limitations, ethics, and environmental impact of using ChatGPT for example, but like any new technology, I propose it is only as good as the creativity and ingenuity of its user.

The full transcript along with my prompts can be found here.

Writing that is fully written by ChatGPT will be cited as such, other aspects will be harder to cite as I will explain further below.

Abstract

This experiment aimed to determine the minimum amount of yeast required to produce detectable CO₂ levels using Vernier Go Direct CO₂ sensors. A series of trials were conducted with varying concentrations of Fleischmann’s Quick Rise yeast (ranging from 1.000g to 0.007g) in a sugar-water solution to measure CO₂ production during fermentation. Baseline trials confirmed that the probes were stable, showing minimal fluctuation without yeast. The results demonstrated a clear correlation between yeast concentration and CO₂ production, with even the smallest amount of yeast (0.007g) generating a measurable increase in CO₂ levels. These findings indicate that the CO₂ sensors are highly sensitive and can detect fermentation at micro-scale levels, providing valuable insights for both educational and industrial applications where precise control over yeast concentrations is important (OpenAI, 2024).

Using AI for an Introduction to a Lab

The first place I hypothesized that ChatGPT would be useful for writing lab reports was to put together an introduction. For me, an introduction needs to hook the reader into caring about the results of the lab, as well as give any background information the reader could potentially read.

For the prompts here, I mainly focused on telling ChatGPT about what my goals were, some of the variables I would be manipulating and the history of the lab activity in general. It originally gave me a very wordy introduction, so after a couple prompts and a bit of editing, this is the introduction I ended up with. The writing below is about 80% ChatGPT and 20% my additions.

Once I had the introduction set up, I went through the rest of the lab, working with ChatGPT to write sections, and then finally came back to the introduction section and got ChatGPT to do a final clean-up, as you can see in my transcript with the AI.

For the introduction, it started out as Level 3, as I went back and forth with the chatbot to describe the experiment. It is my work, just summarized by the bot. In the end though, I took my final mash-up of ChatGPTs work and my work, and received a summarized and sharpened version, which I believe then elevates this section to Level 4.

Introduction

In AP Chemistry, hands-on experiments are an effective way to connect classroom concepts to everyday life. Over twelve years of teaching, kinetics experiments have consistently been a favorite, particularly those involving the catalyzed reaction of sugar and yeast due to its common uses in baking and brewing. These relatable topics help students develop their ability to ask research questions, run experiments, and analyze results, culminating in full lab reports.

The yeast and sugar experiment is especially relevant, as students often explore questions such as "Which type of yeast produces more CO₂?" or "Does yeast have a preferred sugar?" These investigations, using Vernier Go Direct CO₂ sensors, allow students to track CO₂ production as an indicator of fermentation and connect their findings to the kinetics of reaction rates. Over the years, results have shown that different yeast strains and sugar types can indeed affect the rate of CO₂ production.

However, students often start by following package instructions, using large amounts of yeast and sugar, which leads to an overproduction of CO₂ and overwhelming the sensor. This prompted my investigation to determine the minimum amount of yeast required for the sensor to detect CO₂ production when plenty of sugar is present.

The Vernier CO₂ sensor, with a resolution of 1 ppm and a range of 0-10,000 ppm, is sensitive enough to detect even small amounts of CO₂. Therefore, this experiment will test whether a fractional amount of yeast can still generate detectable CO₂. The Fleischmann’s yeast package instructions recommend using about 11g of yeast with a teaspoon of sugar for baking, but this is far too much for small-scale experiments. The goal here is to identify the minimum yeast amount that produces detectable CO₂ levels.

This experiment will measure CO₂ production in a simple sugar solution with varying amounts of yeast. A baseline trial will account for any background noise in the sensor readings, and subsequent trials will determine the smallest amount of yeast detectable using consistent controls. By doing so, the experiment will assess both the sensitivity of the CO₂ sensor and the minimal yeast quantity required to initiate fermentation.

Using AI for the Methods Section

I believe this section is where ChatGPT became most useful. The way I approached using it for the methods section, was to describe the steps I was taking to run the experiment, being clear about my variables and actions. I instructed ChatGPT to “store” that information, and eventually it knew I wanted it to write me a methods section. This mimics very closely what a lab workbook would look like, storing my rough notes and thoughts, to eventually go back and write formally.

In this case though, ChatGPT was able to summarize my entire method section in a fraction of the time. Keeping me organized. It was impressive in the way it was able to organize, chronologically, my procedure.

Originally, it produced a “step-by-step” methods section, which I don’t love (personal preference), so I asked for a narrative style and it came out almost perfect.

For this section it is much harder for me to decided which level I believe this section is. At the end of the day, it is all my work, just summarized by ChatGPT. It did not offer any thoughts or insights, it just summarized what I did. That being said, if I go by the chart above, it would fall into the Level 3, as it did produce the sentences that I would eventually edit and paste below.

One note: all graphs and tables produced below are my own.

Methods

To investigate the minimum detectable amount of yeast required for CO₂ production, a series of trials were conducted using Vernier Go Direct CO₂ probes. The experiments began by preparing three probes (numbers 13, 15, and 16), which were washed with tap water and calibrated following the manufacturer’s guidelines. Tap water was used as it would be the most common water used in any baking application, as since this experiment is in the realm of baking, it was decided that tap water would be sufficient. Calibration was performed indoors, and the probes were placed in the Vernier standardized bottles which accompany the probes. Each trial contained 75 mL of 36°C tap water with 4.5 grams of pre-dissolved sugar, optimal living temperature for the yeast, and an abundant amount of sugar for the reaction. These initial trials aimed to assess any background CO₂ levels or "noise" in the system before introducing yeast. The probes were observed for a few minutes to notice any fluctuations in data and then allowed to adjust for 5 minutes before data collection began. The yeast data was intended to be then collected over a 20-minute period. The baseline trials revealed minimal fluctuations in CO₂ concentration, confirming a stable setup (See Graph 1 in Data Section). The probes stayed within an acceptable range over a 10 minute period.

For the first set of yeast trials, varying amounts of Fleischmann’s Quick Rise yeast were introduced to the sugar solution. The yeast was pre-dissolved in 10 mL of 36°C water before being added to the containers. Probe 13 (red on graph) received 1.000g of yeast, probe 15 (yellow on graph) received 0.500g, and probe 16 (blue on graph) received 0.050g. After adding the yeast, the mixtures were gently stirred and left to stabilize for one minute before starting data collection. Stirring was repeated every 5 minutes over the course of an intended 25-minute trial, during which CO₂ levels were closely monitored. Notably, one probe (13) initially registered higher readings after adding the water, but this discrepancy resolved after a brief adjustment period. The trial was ended after 900s (15 minutes) as the results were clear that the probes were all registering a change in CO₂ concentration much above that of the baseline levels when no yeast was involved.

Encouraged by the results from the initial trials, a second set of experiments was conducted to explore smaller increments of yeast. The same sugar-water mixture (4.5 grams of sugar in 75 mL of water) was used, with yeast pre-dissolved in 10 mL of 36°C water. Probe 16 received 0.007g of yeast, probe 15 was assigned 0.012g, and probe 13 received 0.044g. These masses were chosen as they were visibly different when putting some yeast grains on the weigh boats. Any less either seemed too miniscule, or did not register sufficiently on the scales. 

After allowing the probes to stabilize again for 5 minutes then the probes were recalibrated to 400 ppm after a 15-minute period with just water and sugar, ensuring accuracy before the trials with yeast began. The second yeast trials ran for 25 minutes, with readings taken every 5 minutes to ensure consistency across the experiments.

Data Section

Graph 1: Baseline Data for the three probes

Graph 2: 1.00 g Yeast (Blue), 0.500g Yeast (Yellow), 0.05g Yeast (Red)

Graph 3: 0.04 g Yeast (Red), 0.012g Yeast (Blue), 0.007g yeast (Yellow)

Analysis

I did not use ChatGPT for this section as I figured it would be more work to enter in all my analysis thoughts for it to then consolidate it. If I had a more complex research question that required more data analysis, it could have been useful to run it through some of the specific Chatbots on ChatGPT.

A1. Baseline Trials

The purpose of the baseline trials was to analyze the “noise” of these probes. Once I ran the baseline for a while, I could see that the probes do not fluctuate outside of 10 ppm of their starting point. Even after removing the probes and changing the conditions between adding new ingredients, the probes do not fluctuate much. This was an important aspect as in previous years some of the probes would “go rouge” and continue to steadily increase despite no reaction actually happening.

A2: 0.05g - 1.00g

It is clear by the graph above that the probes work quite well in differentiated amounts of yeast. It would be assumed that the more yeast present, the more CO₂ that could be produced with the same amount of sugar in a set amount of time. The graph shows that the 1.00 g trial produced much more, and much faster, than the 0.500 g and 0.05 g trials. Although the scale for the 1.00 and 0.500 g trials throw off the 0.05 g trial, a change was still seen in concentration, so further trials needed to be done to see “how little” could really be detected.

A3: < 0.04g Trials

Again, it can clearly be seen that all three trials produced some amount of CO₂, even the 0.007g of yeast produced a 60 ppm increase (~10%) over a 25 minute period. Again, the validity of the experiment can be seen by the larger amounts of yeast producing more CO₂ than the minimal amounts of yeast.

Using AI for the experiment Discussion

For this section, I copied and pasted everything I had written above, including the data and analysis, to ask ChatGPT what useful subheadings for a “discussion section” would be. It ended up producing a very good summary and some highlights of my lab which I will include here. This would fall under Level 4, as it is ChatGPT which summarized the lab and explained some of the strengths of the lab, with me slightly editing some of the sections. I wrote the introduction to the section, but the headings and the content under are mostly ChatGPT.

Discussion

The results for the lab were conclusive in understanding the minimum amount of  yeast that could be detected by the CO₂ sensors. I believe the senors could even detect smaller amounts. The 0.007g trial had a “countable” amount of yeast on it, probably between 10-30 grains of dried yeast. If the scale was even more sensitive, I believe it could have detected CO₂ generated by a few grains of yeast.

Although there was not a fully fleshed out “hypothesis”, there are three main highlights I believe this lab archives:

1. Effectiveness of Probes and Experimental Setup

The CO₂ probes demonstrated consistent stability, with fluctuations within 10 ppm during baseline trials, reinforcing their reliability for detecting small-scale CO₂ production. Recalibrating the probes to 400 ppm after the initial baseline was crucial in ensuring accurate readings, particularly for the trials involving minimal yeast concentrations. This stability is essential when working with small amounts of yeast, as even slight probe instability could obscure meaningful data, which makes these sensors well-suited for this type of experiment (OpenAI, 2024).

2. Yeast and CO₂ Production Relationship

The experiment showed a clear relationship between yeast concentration and CO₂ production, with detectable fermentation from as little as 0.007g of yeast. This highlights both the sensitivity of the CO₂ sensors and the efficiency of yeast in metabolizing sugar, even in very small quantities. These findings could have broader implications for optimizing fermentation processes in various industries, where controlling yeast efficiency at different concentrations can lead to more consistent results in baking, brewing, or other fermentation-driven applications (OpenAI, 2024).

3. Comparison of Different Yeast Concentrations

CO₂ production increased proportionally with yeast concentration, as expected, with higher yeast amounts producing faster and more significant CO₂ levels. The results confirm that yeast concentration directly influences fermentation rates, which can be crucial for adjusting yeast amounts in different practical settings. However, while even very small yeast quantities were detectable, there may be practical limitations in real-world applications, where controlling such small amounts could be challenging or impractical outside of laboratory conditions (OpenAI, 2024).

For the Sources of Error, I believe that I had standardized my methodology well enough that I would have avoided any critical impingements that would have nullified my results. If I had to then use the data to analyze a certain RATE or expected value per unit of yeast, I would have included a stir bar and ensured the yeast and sugar was being interacted with sufficiently rather than my occasional stirring. As the purpose of this lab was to just see if there was a “detectable” amount, the rate of production, as well as the values were less important, however, the magnitudes collected allowed me to still think that the results were valid. To increase the validity of the trials, more trials, and repeatable trials could have been used, but from experiment to experiment, the expected results (more yeast = more CO₂) were conclusive, and SOME CO₂ was detected in all trials that contained yeast and sugar. 

For future experiments, I would consider; a) exploring the minimum amount of sugar required,  b) comparing the different yeast strains, and if more time allowed c) running multiple trials to see how repeatable the results using similar amounts really is. 

The experiment results will conclusively serve as an aid for future students to decide how much yeast is required for their experiments.

Using AI for the Conclusion

Again, the strength of the ChatGPT (or any generative AI) is getting a summary of work, either your own or by way of a literature review. 

For this section I took the entire lab and asked for a conclusion section in less than three paragraphs. This would be a level 4 use of AI.

Lab Conclusions

The purpose of this experiment was to determine the smallest amount of yeast necessary for detectable CO₂ production using Vernier Go Direct CO₂ sensors. Through a series of trials involving different concentrations of yeast in a sugar-water solution, baseline CO₂ levels were first established to ensure that any subsequent changes in CO₂ concentration were due to fermentation. The experiment successfully demonstrated that the CO₂ probes were stable and capable of detecting even minimal amounts of yeast, with as little as 0.007g producing measurable CO₂ levels. This sensitivity highlights the effectiveness of the probes for small-scale fermentation experiments.

The results showed a clear relationship between yeast concentration and CO₂ production, with higher yeast amounts leading to faster and more substantial increases in CO₂ levels. The experiment confirms that even very small amounts of yeast are sufficient to initiate fermentation, making it possible to fine-tune yeast usage in practical applications. The evaluation of the experiment also demonstrated that the probes were reliable, with minimal fluctuations in baseline readings. While practical applications of such small yeast amounts may be limited, the findings provide valuable insights into both the sensitivity of the sensors and the efficiency of yeast, offering potential for further research in fermentation processes and educational settings (OpenAI, 2024).

ChatGPT/Generative AI as a lab assistant Conclusions

I believe this was a very efficient and effective use of generative AI and honestly, it was kind of fun. As someone who has recently tried to dive deep into the writing process, I’ve been avoiding using ChatGPT as I’d rather be honing my own skills. In this application, using this tool allowed me to streamline the lab writing process in a way that still enabled me to be the generator of the novel ideas. Clearly, my knowledge of the lab writing process, comfort with the tools and technologies involved in the lab, and the understanding of the reaction allowed me to work efficiently in collaboration with ChatGPT.

I approached it as a “writing partner” rather than an “idea generator”, which, in the future, I would encourage my students to try. My hesitation though, is to which level students will not allow themselves to be the generator of novel ideas, and instead rely too much on the generative AI to produce the work.

Creating a lab report like this has taken students in the past over a month, while they struggle with creating procedures, tracking their variables and procedures, using the tools and technologies, and deciding what needs to be entered into each section of the report. They often cite staring at a blank page as a hurdle to overcome in the writing process, even though they know what they did, and how they did it, they struggle in putting it together in a cohesive way.

In running this experiment, I was able to run all the trials (some which took around 20 minutes), write the lab report, and write this entire reflective piece in three class periods (around four hours).

In doing some further research, it is clear that there are many ways generative AI is being used in the sciences, especially in the lab writing realm, already. Looking at Using ChatGPT Wisely with Your Lab Work by Zareh Zurabyan (2024), there are many aspects in which I did in this lab, and I believe all levels of lab work will continue to use to streamline the lab writing process.

As always, thanks for reading.

DiPartures continues to be a way for me to publish the projects I am working on independently, if you enjoyed reading aspects of this, please consider subscribing to keep up to date with the random assortment of interests I write about.

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I have had my “job” that supports my “art habit” for almost 13 years now, but don’t often talk or write about it as it is totally unrelated to this project. Also, I don’t love the word “job”, because I actually love my career, but I do love the sentiment as it is my job that affords me the time and money to continue pursing my art habit(s), as SoEV does not generate any income.

I have recently embarked on co-editing and publishing a book covering the transformation of the school I have been at for the last 13 years and thought I would share my chapter from the book as it covers what my “job” really is.

I am a secondary school teacher and one of the most frequent interactions I have with people through my SoEV project is:

“Are you a full time photographer?”

Where I usually answer: “no, I’m a teacher”.

In which they follow: “oh, do you teach photography at Emily Carr or something?”

In which I respond: “no, I’m a high school chemistry teacher”.

From this interaction the conversation usually goes one of two ways: 1) Oh, I loved science in high school, I work in _____________ (some related field) or 2) oh god, I dropped science the second I could. Then we usually move past it, as most people just assume they know everything there is to know about being a teacher, since we all went to school and have had plenty of life experience with teachers of all sorts. Follow-up questions or comments are rare but usually fall into the realm of “I don’t know how you work with kids” or “I could never be a teacher”… Not great conversation.

The reality is, teaching today is drastically different than it was even when I was in high school (almost 20 years ago…) and it continues to change and evolve.

I am hoping that publishing this piece helps give some insights of what my day-to-day looks like for those who are curious as well as enlighten some of you who may assume that you know what is going on in schools these days. That being said, I am working in a pretty specific and special context.

The work of being a teacher, in general, is becoming increasingly complex, dynamic, and emotionally taxing, but I can’t imagine doing anything else. Social emotional learning, diversity, equity, and inclusion, new technologies, social media, sustainability, extra-curriculars, and being a mentor are all things all teachers are having to juggle on a daily basis, on top of teaching the curriculum, regardless of the context.

For a bit of the context into where I work; Southridge School is located in South Surrey, it is a small, independent, K-12 school. We are privileged to have small classroom sizes (anywhere from 8-18 students) where this type of “teaching pedagogy” flourishes (but we have also seen this pedagogy work with groups much bigger).

The school took a chance on me 13 years ago, coming straight out of university and I am forever grateful for the opportunity.

At this point of my career I am still a classroom teacher, but also so much more, including a basketball coach, advisor, curriculum leader and newly, a “Harkness coach”.

Unless you are also a teacher, you probably have never heard of “Harkness”, essentially; we sit around a conference table for classrooms and engage in “discussion-based learning”. Students are encouraged to ask questions without raising hands, discuss topics from previous lessons, and converse amongst one another to solve problems.

There are many other nuances and details about Harkness, if you are curious you can feel free to contact me for more information, or check the Southridge Harkness page for more information! I will cover many of them in the writing below.

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Here is my chapter:

Dialogues in Discovery: A Decade of Harkness Science Education

I believe my journey with Harkness is a fairly unique one. To be honest, I am not familiar with talking or writing about my own experience at the table. Over the past twelve years, I’ve been focused on the student experience in the classroom, amplifying student voices, and trying to understanding the benefits and challenges from their perspective. It has influenced everything I do from planning lessons, designing labs, running basketball practices, even my Master's thesis. Having this opportunity to explore and reflect on how I got here was enlightening, but it will require a bit of background in order to fully understand my current position and relationship with Harkness.

I was introduced to philosophy before I even began teaching my first class at Southridge, in fact, my entire teaching pedagogy/philosophy/methodology was changed before I sat in my first classroom as a teacher. 

Coming out of my four year science undergrad program, I was young, ambitious, and hungry to work in an employment climate that was, unfortunately, less than ideal in Ontario. During my Bachelor of Education program our professors and instructors were telling us “at this rate, you’ll either have to work “way up north”, “overseas”, or spend 10 years on the supply list.” I was not a fan of this prescription and was committed to starting my career as a full time teacher, willing to move across the country to do so. By chance, there was a posting at Southridge for a Science teacher. To this day I have no idea how I found the posting, but I know that the desire to move to the mountains helped draw me to look online at Alberta and British Columbia and luckily enough I found that posting. 

While wrapping up my B.Ed. degree, I created an online portfolio, applied to Southridge, and luckily, secured an interview. Following successful interviews, they invited me to give a demo lesson to assess my fit for the school. I flew out to Vancouver and prepared for my lesson using what I thought were the “freshest skills” a teacher could have. At the time, Southridge was focused on being tech-forward and so was my B. Ed. program, so it seemed like a perfect fit. I came prepared with an iPad and laptop all synced up, a fancy presentation and a lab demonstration to ‘wow’ the students. Having all the new tech bells and whistles, confident in my skills as a “presenter” it's safe to say I was overconfident, and very naïve. 

During this time I had developed my own ideas and conceptions of how a classroom should be run, thinking I was the “all knowing-owner of the content”, able to distribute it in my own way, with a bit of flair and tech, students would likely hang onto my every word and if they didn’t… their loss? It’s really the only approach I had experienced as a student, especially in the science courses I had taken. We often looked at our teachers and professors as the knowledge keepers with the high degree of content knowledge and experience in their field, unloading facts and figures onto students so that we can retain enough scientific information and regurgitate it in time for an exam or assignment. At this point I generally had some conceptions of what it meant to teach in a science classroom, but that would change soon enough. 

I flew to BC, taught a demo lesson, all the tech worked perfectly and the students seemed to enjoy the lab demo. I remember being “on display” for the majority of the class, giving it my all and ending the class with a demonstration and some practice problems. A few weeks later Southridge gave me an offer to come teach a full-time position in the fall. I was very excited but also overwhelmed as I had never even taught a full course. I figured I could easily replicate that practice lesson for each topic in my courses. I made my way to the Lower Mainland that summer but had to arrive early to school this year as they were going to be hosting a “special” professional development; something I “didn’t want to miss” as promised by the principal at the time.  

Little did I know, I would have an opportunity to begin my career as a teacher encouraged to explore Harkness. I can’t know for sure, but I believe without this opportunity, I don’t think I would be as engaged, invested, motivated, and satisfied with my work as a teacher and in reflecting back to what my conceptions of teaching were before I learned about Harkness and comparing them to now, 12 years later, has been fascinating. 

Integrating Harkness into Science

Letting go of being the source of knowledge in the science classroom can be difficult. Students (and teachers) often find comfort in the fact that their science educators have this perceived wealth of subject knowledge: experts in their specific field. In our schools context, this comes from many of the structures beyond our own control, such as the way we’ve historically organized our classes and textbooks into the four disciplines (biology, chemistry, earth science, physics), the reality of being “content-heavy” courses, the desire to excel in the AP Curriculum, among many others.

In my experience, the sciences are often presented in a way that emphasizes finding “correct” answers, valuing and studying the work of “the great thinkers”, and attempting to stay objective with data. There of course is value in all of those qualities, but I argue it does not lead to creative, empathetic, or diverse thinking within the field and in the classroom. As a student, I had also witnessed how it can also lead to stagnant lessons, leading students to be disengaged and assuming we could simply study later as the materials and same old content were reused year after year. This did not foster adjectives and descriptors we’d like to imagine at the forefront of science like “innovative, curious, experimental”, but rather “memorization, conformity, stasis”.

If I had not been exposed to Harkness, maybe I would have continued to use the same lessons I developed in my first few years: slide shows, practice worksheets, prescribed lab procedures. I imagine the content would be delivered sufficiently and the majority of the students would leave with some decent understanding and knowledge of chemistry concepts. However, I doubt that I would be as engaged as I am today, and I don’t think I would have made strong connections with the students as I have made in teaching with Harkness. I believe these connections strengthen students' understanding as they also become more engaged with the material as we engage as a community rather than isolated learners.

Within the first few years, I had the opportunity to develop my classroom pedagogy from a Harkness lens and it continues to be the way I look at every class today. Working on this takes some trial and error, experimentation, and data collection which sparked the scientific side of me I knew I had all this time but was not fueling through my undergrad. As you have read from the chapters preceding this one, at its best, Harkness fosters questioning, critical thinking, and engagement at the table and I needed to find ways to integrate more of it into my classroom. Imagine where the scientific community (and the world at large) would be today if the previous generations focused more on collaboration and less on competition.

Initially, there was a “safety” I found in trying to adapt old lessons handed down to me from the years prior, but as I grew more confident in the material, my desire to shift into a more democratic, exploratory, conversation style classroom took over my planning process. Rarely am I able to “give” the same lesson twice, nor do I really want to. Each group of students brings their own unique strengths and weaknesses and these are magnified when we encourage them to discuss and interact with one another in order to discover the scientific skills and content. Although the content doesn’t change too drastically from year to year, the way the students interact with the content, and one another, does. 

In content-heavy courses such as the senior sciences, it is easy to get trapped into rote memorization and facts and figures (which are all sometimes necessary of course) but when I am able to ask myself, “How can discussion fit into this lesson” I often notice that a new path of possibilities opens that allows us to take that content and explore it through a different lens.

Encouraging the students to do the “heavy lifting” is now at the core of most lessons; transferring the work to the students allows them to make those strong connections between concepts, and between their classmates that I believe really solidifies the knowledge. Offering them the opportunity to ask questions at any time, and being comfortable knowing it’s okay to seek clarification allows a more democratic classroom as they continue to take ownership over their learning as we scaffold these skills through their time at the school.

Other times, the course may require a complete break from the “content” to focus more on the science skills such as communication, critical thinking, and applying and innovating, which offers much more room for discussion. These breaks also allow the class to explore science through a different set of principles and concepts, such as ethics, environment, or equity, which I would argue had always been missing from the more “traditional” science spaces.

Developing empathy in science through discussion

A few years ago, while working on ways to authentically integrate discussions into content-heavy (and exam-focused) courses, I decided to offer an opportunity for my Chemistry 12 and AP Chemistry 12 students to engage in scientific conversations that were focused on the pressing issues, emerging technologies, and puzzling questions that we face as a scientific community.

After a few iterations of running “student-led discussions”, it has turned into what is often cited as the students favorite aspect of taking chemistry at the school. While this may seem like too far of a departure from the content of the course, this is the most valuable exercise we undertake as a class, and it would not have been integrated without having the goal of having more Harkness in my chemistry classroom. There are many opportunities to use discussions with regards to the content, of course, but the depth of conversations and the variety of topics available in running an activity like this is unmatched.

The task for students is quite simple; they need to lead a discussion where they pick a scientific topic that interests them and gather resources and create questions that explore the ethical and/or environmental issues associated with that topic. They share those resources and discussion questions with the class a week before the discussion so that their peers, and myself, can prepare.

Topics in these discussions have included; mental health and neuroplasticity, genetic engineering, the financial and mental cost of postsecondary education, studies on fake news and social media, science of music, mining in space, psychedelic therapies, artificial intelligence, diversity in the workplace and classroom, civil engineering for greener cities, and many, many more.

I will always defend my position in taking anywhere from five to ten full classes a year to have these discussions as I believe it strengthens many aspects of what we need in our future scientists.

With none of us at the table being “experts” in any particular field, it opens the room to have no “one source of knowledge”, rather, we build an understanding of the topic together. This usually starts with an overview of the subject and then moves into a deeper dive using guiding questions prepared by the student facilitators. This not only allows students to feel the ownership over the conversation, it also builds a more democratic classroom as I often have to stumble and ask questions through topics alongside them, rather than pulling them along as I sometimes have to do with the content. The students are often able to synthesize information from other courses or resources to help enrich and push the conversation as well.  Of course, a level of trust and willingness to share and change your own understanding is at the heart of many of these topics as there are usually points of tension or controversy within some of them.

The goal is to always build our understanding of the topics together, celebrating differing opinions and perspectives as that allows us to grow a better view of the rapidly changing landscape of science. Having students be comfortable with differing opinions and pushing them to value and respect their differences, but work together within those tensions, all while learning a new topic, is what I believe to be the most important part of my science classroom and developing the scientists of the future.

Conclusion 

My journey from a traditional, content-focused science educator to embracing the Harkness method has been a transformative journey. Shifting from the notion of being the sole purveyor of knowledge to fostering a more democratic and exploratory classroom has not only enriched my teaching experience but has impacted student engagement and understanding. The transition from a tech-heavy, presentation-style approach to one centered around discussions has opened new avenues for exploration and encouraged students to take ownership of their learning. 

Although I would love to provide some hard data to back up my claims that students learn science better with this method, it is impossible to measure using classical tools such as performance on tests or titrations. However, year after year, the anecdotal evidence I collect in the reflections on the student-led discussions and genuine thanks I receive at the end of the year continues to fortify my conviction in this teaching philosophy.

Above all, I continue to receive notes years later as alumni reflect on their time in the discussion-based classroom, citing pivotal moments in discussions in which they were able to change their own way of thinking, learn from their peers, or explore a topic they had never thought about before, leading to pathways they may have never considered if they had just been committed to rote memorization of the curricular content.

As I continue to evolve my teaching methods, the Harkness philosophy remains a guiding force, emphasizing the importance of collaborative learning, diverse perspectives, and a dynamic, ever-adapting energy to navigating the nuances of science education. This journey has not just altered the way I teach; it has redefined my role as an educator, highlighting that the true essence of education lies in empowering students to become active participants in their learning journey and fostering a genuine passion for the evolving world of science.

Thanks for reading.

If you are in education (or not) and you’d like more information, feel free to reach out, part of my role as a Harkness Coach is to help teach others about the methodology!

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