Negative

My focus with going to CrossFit has been to enjoy the benefits of functional fitness, keep the various hinges working, and to focus on the conditioning component vs. Olympic lifting (which I can’t often do anyway). As well, any intense physical activity has mental health benefits, which is increasingly important these days.

I seem to have been gifted with good heart and lungs, and excellent VO2 Max, which allows me to push myself during activities that don’t require me to move a lot of weight. Any activity involving sprinting and the BikeERG I seem to enjoy most. Endurance activities seem limited by my weak frame alone. This is not to say that I expect to be finishing the MOAB240 or even the PEI marathon, but this seems to be where I am at my best and receive the most joy.

Lately, the workouts have taken a turn to the difficult. My time is only slightly off but the effort to complete has increased exponentially. One night this week I was laying on the ground post workout in a fetal position, less something bad might happen. Last night I found it difficult to breathe.

Granted our diet since returning to Canada has taken a turn for the worse and I’ve gained close to 10kg as a result but this seemed like a sudden change. With cold like symptoms, more laboured breathing, and general malaise I thought perhaps my 5 minutes in an overcrowded box store might have given me the gift of COVID.

So I took a test and it came up negative.

Now the only blame I can place on my decreased performance is my enlarged belly and a lack of training.


How it went

I started my holiday not with sitting still but with cleaning the whole house, taking all the extra stuff’s laying around out to storage, installing some new pieces on the wall and generally doing things that kept me moving and busy. It’s excruciatingly difficult to not do something.

Eventually I calmed down a bit and Christmas Day was spent preparing for our afternoon dinner and watching bad movies and TV. The only close family we have left on the Island is my 90 year old uncle who came over for a socially distanced dinner. He left with enough food and sweets to get him through January.

Perhaps it’s reverse culture shock, but I’m still not convinced with the “be kind to yourself take a break” culture that seems to be so common on the Island. I do feel energized today, despite not sleeping well, and am looking forward to a full day of work tomorrow. To contradict myself, they might be on to something.

When I was in Asia I was big on resisting the prevailing attitudes on work. I wanted hobbies, time for outside activities, and time to think. It’s strange to me that once I arrived in Canada, a place where you can’t find people because they are on coffee break, I became what I often wasn’t before.

While I don’t expect I will start taking weekends off anytime soon, I do plan on taking time off like this more often.


The Future

In the Spring of this year I finally came to the realization that the work I was doing, though rewarding, was at best a side hustle and decided to make some changes. Ideas of what to do are easy, ideas always are, but I didn’t really trust my own intuition and decided to ask for help.

So I started a design research project of sorts. Which though odd, makes sense to me since I use design thinking in most areas of my life. In total I interviewed about 12 different people, some of whom knew me, but none of whom have ever worked with me. Most were employed in tech, design, or were entrepreneurs. These were “casual conversations with a purpose”, short, and very open ended. I had no script.

The results were a wall of data which I further distilled to 2 categories, each with 3 data points each.

So I knew how and what to do. But I didn’t take action because all of sudden we started to make money podcasting.

The funny thing about living in Canada is that more money is not always a positive. It has to be a lot more money.

In our first year we made next to nothing, but had almost zero expenses. In our 2nd year, we doubled our income but we added a huge increase in expenses which negated the increase. In our upcoming 3rd year we see a large increase in revenue but now any increases will be absorbed by taxes, depending on how, or if I take a salary.

Yesterday over coffee we looked at the business, our finances and talked more about our future. We lead a modest lifestyle with the majority of our money going to support our mental and physical health. The thought of living here long term, leading the lifestyle we wanted, was a risk, the economics of which no longer exist.

I don’t know other families in Stratford well enough to ask how they manage, but I do know that we make far above the median income and just break even. We can’t approach the same lifestyle we had in Taiwan, nor could we survive on my wife’s salary like we frequently did there.

So we have started planning for an alternative future, one that includes living elsewhere, but also includes me working for someone else, which I admit is attractive, and/or working multiple jobs.

The future is basically more, not less work.


A Christmas gift

I’m burned out and reached my limit. With the exception of my wedding anniversary I have not to my knowledge taken a day off since last Christmas.

There has always been a bit of darkness to my personality, lurking in the background of my form of introversion, and sometimes exhibited by moodiness, or by being overly pragmatic, or once at it’s worst, mild depression.

Lately, it’s been more akin to burnout, which is what I have been feeling for a number of weeks now. It shades my perspective of living here and life in general.

My lack of running due first to injury, than the near constant horrible weather (an excuse), has not helped. When I move and do something I feel good. When I don’t accomplish much I can feel the darkness encroaching on my mood.

The conditioning workouts at Crossfit help, but working myself to physical exhaustion, last night I felt like throwing up, doesn’t have the same lasting effect as before.

So for 4 days I am going to try and do nothing, except clean the house, read, and binge watch tv. That’s this years Christmas gift. The hope is that this will be a recharge of sorts and that it will enable me to continue doing good work in what is going be a very busy new year.


Post Christmas

Coming out of Superstore last night in my evening stupor of exhaustion I stopped and mentioned to Sheryl that they were actually playing Christmas music. My first taste of Christmas muzak. Looking around the outside of the store it would be hard to notice it was Christmas season.

Downtown Charlottetown looks great with each changing season. Christmas is no different with the streets lit up and store fronts decorated. But leaving the downtown area around the Confederation Centre one would be hard pressed to realize much of the usual Christmas excitement of years past.

I could of course be blind to it all now.

The bright lights and celebrations have been moved to the residential areas, where I guess they should be.

I do miss the ostentatious light displays, the rush to find gifts, the food and general excitement of years past. It’s ironic to me that some of the best displays of Christmas come from our times in countries that place no cultural value on the holiday at all.

Luckily this Christmas we will all have the day off, something that was not always possible in the past, and spend the day eating, and wearing out the couch. Less gifting, more time with family.


Foreboding

Looking at the water yesterday, while out for a run, I had the feeling that a major storm was on the way. The harbour was so calm and sky grey.

Running at my level is largely a mental exercise, so one of the tricks I have been playing on myself is to wear shorts and a minimum of clothes on top. That way, if you dare stop moving you freeze. Eventually though, after I warm up and my legs are numb I stop to take some pictures.

The undershirt I wear is by KALENJI. And at $15 it is likely the deal of the century. I have winter gear costing 7x that which is no where near as effective. It keeps you warm until -15 and wicks dry in a flash. This coupled with a windbreaker and you are good to go but for the coldest of days.


On this day

7 years ago today I reached what I thought was the pinnacle of my Chinese language ability as I fielded questions from students at a university in Fujian. Giving a lecture in Chinese is one thing, but the unpredictability of what comes out of students mouths another. I was encouraged to teach the design school undergrads by my then employer, perhaps in an effort to make the company seem more international, and thus slightly more attractive for new recruits. I was nervous as hell but prepared and generally thought it went well. But as was often the case in Taiwan and China, the dean at once thanked me, and thereafter chided me for speaking less than perfect Chinese. Thoughts and ideas are of less importance than your ability to convey them.


Why Vaccinate?

I don’t know why I had the question or remember what online news article might have triggered this procrastination, but I thought I would go in search of “Why should we vaccinate against COVID on the Island”. We are all vaccinated, for self-preserving reasons first and foremost, and I have as much an understanding of the science to make a reasonable decision as I need. But time and time again I hear or read people having muddled responses as to their reasoning, which though they are I assume vaccinated, would lead me to believe that many are not clear as to what vaccines are and do.

Surely the PEI Gov. website would have that answer? Not that I could find with any reasonable search. The best I could find was from the Immunize BC website which though a tad lengthy for most people today, was very clear.

Why vaccinate.

When nonfactual information keeps getting repeated over and over again it replaces truth. This isn’t a messaging problem or a PR problem, it’s a design failure in government to present facts in a way that remind people of their purpose, in such a way that is clear enough to be a signal though all the noise.


Ads

This is another big week for advertising on Sleep Tight Stories for which we are grateful, as without them we might not be able to continue doing what we do. At the same time I likely won’t sleep, as I fear our listeners will balk and bail, or there will be a tech fail. Our numbers are still just about the same from the last ad campaign but this I see as a sort of stress test for listener loyalty.


Colors

I’ve taken a new approach to running of late, partially a result of listening to a number of interviews of Courtney Dauwalter. She espouses a joyful enthusiasm towards getting outdoors and moving your body which has been lacking for me these last 8 months. No training plan just run as your body feels. Of course, what her body can do and mine are miles apart, 240 miles, as she has been the winner of the 240 mile MOAB race over all participants. Which is great evidence of what the mind is possible of doing.

She is also a refreshing change from the “dominate”, “crush”, “who’s carrying the boats son” testosterone addicted athletes I’ve been listening to for too long.

So I go out and run, look at my surroundings, take pictures, and don’t worry so much about pace. It’s been working very well and despite the increasing cold I’ve been enjoying running. I tried to do the same today, as it was the type of temperatures I’d love to see all winter, but alas my Achilles still doesn’t want to come along with the rest of me. This injury just does not want to go away.

My plans are, if I can heal my injury, to spend an increasing amount of time running on the trails culminating in some moderate distance trail race in the summer, ideally in Utah, COVID willing.


Mysteries

Living and now working under people gives you insight into strangers lives.

Our first year back in Charlottetown was a nightmare, as we lived under a neighbour we unaffectionately called “Stampy”. He and his family own a restaurant in the downtown and would look like model neighbours – always a smile. But surfaces can be deceiving and many nights were filled with parties and people falling down drunk. Not the neighbours I wanted at this stage in my life.

Now I work in an extremely quiet office below a publisher of a periodical, which my past experience tells me is primarily a sit down do work affair. The noisy days of setting type are over but for those who appreciate the craft.

And yet there are days when I hear people constantly walking on their heels, using what sounds like a cement mixer, shuffling drawers and dragging large objects across the floor (dead body?). It’s at times like working under the constant din of a hotel lobby.

I mostly have my headphones on and it’s not in the same league as Stampy but it often leaves me curious. Maybe one day I’ll just ask.


Coffee and Pineapple Cakes

Sheryl received an unexpected gift of coffee beans and pineapple cakes from Taiwan. Much appreciated and I feel lucky that she has such great friends. I’m anxious to try the coffee, not just because you can never have enough, but also to test the likely romanticized memory I have of the quality of beans in Taiwan. Pineapple cake is an odd pairing with coffee but I will give that a try too.


Still searching

I’m still looking for glasses for running and CrossFit that don’t cost $500 or more dollars. These come close in fit but still need some adjustment to overcome the sweaty slide. I think I’ve aged about 10 years since I returned home to the Island, which is the exact opposite effect I had hoped for.


A positive medical experience

The medical system on PEI has been a swirling cesspool of negativity of late with my own opinion being of the we are doomed when we get older type. I’ve been so concerned that I’ve starting questioning the logic of moving home, particularly as we enter the time when the machine that is our body starts to need concerted attention.

We don’t have a family doctor, and we have found it increasingly difficult to see a doctor at a walk-in-clinic. Often, the Water St. clinic will be full in less than a minute after registration opens. This week though, to my surprise I was able to book an appointment, which is in itself a cause for celebration. Upon arrival I was greeted with such positivity I had to ask the nurse what was going on. Why are you all so happy? She just chuckled and I forget what she saidw but I get the impression that these are people that enjoy doing what they do.

I’ve been experiencing some middle age malaise which has been interfering with my sleep at night – how I continue to function on so little sleep is a mystery, though yesterday was an exception and I went and bought groceries instead of doing what I had planned.

The doctor I saw at the clinic, was personable and gave me as much of her time as someone working in a clinic could afford. After our talk, she asked the nurse to take some blood in order to order some comprehensive tests and I was told to expect a 10 business day wait.

Well, yesterday after a scant 3 days the doctor called me to tell me that everything was better than perfect, made some George Burns references, and was again generally a beacon of positivity. The medical system in this case over delivered, what a joy.

I’ve had the (mis)fortune of interacting with medical professionals all over the world, and I can say I prefer those on the Island to most others I have interacted with. I just hope we can give them the pay and environment they deserve, and us the access we need.


Advertising

Reason #100 why I can’t lead a business.

October, November and December are big months for podcast advertising and we have been fortunate to have a number of baked in ads, feed drops, and our first campaign across all our audio inventory. We upgraded our hosting to Libsyn’s expensive enterprise plan specifically to take advantage of their digital ad insertion software which we need to be able to serve ads for larger campaigns.

We’ve been advertising our own products fairly consistently for almost a year but host read ads have been sporadic and not enough of a revenue generator to start paying a salary. Our call to actions for our listeners have been slow and strategic – we wanted to make sure that this model worked for them and we wouldn’t have a mass exodus. Until now we have had no push back from them.

The new campaign ads are different. Though the script was carefully crafted, and produced to be as relaxing as our stories, the pre roll is there to listen to before each and every story. The only escape is to press the forward button.

The email and messages have already started protesting the changes. Which bothers me and has me considering whether or not this is the correct approach for us. It feels like there is nothing worse than disappointing your listeners, especially when they are children. Yet, this campaign accounts for almost a 1/3rd of our yearly income and without 2-3 of these a year podcasting as a stand alone activity will be not be viable. We’ve had the longest runway imaginable and it’s now time to see if we can continue.

I dislike this focus on money and how it interferes with making nice things.


Inevitable death of Indie [insert activity]

Everyday I do much the same thing. I get up grab my phone to make sure there are no dumpster fires, drink coffee, prepare food for myself and others and read much the same news sources that I have been reading for 15 years or more. I used to run, and I sometimes go to CrossFit early, but these days I prefer to use this early morning caffeination for work.

On my 3rd cup I check stats and reports. I shouldn’t but I am competitive and want to see how our podcasts are doing (growth is flat btw). Lately, competition has been increasing, not from other Indie publishers but from large companies with huge marketing budgets. Companies who can afford to spend their way out of the discovery problem and later (maybe) recoup their costs by selling advertisers on their reach.

It’s sometimes disheartening. I’ve gotten past the times when the CBC would launch a show that competes indirectly with us, CBC has a sound that not everyone can identify with, and all our shows have more listeners than their’s 😊.

But it’s harder when a slew of private enterprises, with large investments, come in and flood the space with highly polished shows that feed off the category that small more personal creators have grown.

Indie creators are not competitors, they are colleagues. Many sound better, are more engaging, or have a voice that more people connect with. I learn from them.

Perhaps the larger organizations elevate the art. Give us goal posts. Jack Conte’s views aside, I do wonder if the same thing won’t happen to podcasting, that happened with so many other indie publishing movements of the past. Do many make money blogging anymore?


Children’s stories

I’ve been writing children’s stories. I don’t write well, but I feel it’s important to be a beginner, to put myself in a position for failure and growth. And it’s fun.

My available time is short, so I time box aggressively, and sit down and see what I can produce in, after all the inevitable procrastinating, what amounts to a few hours in an afternoon.

One of the advantages of having a couple stories podcasts is that I have a built in audience, an audience who will be very honest and forthright with their criticism or praise. An audience that shapes the themes I will write about – stories with girls in leading roles, with modern family arrangements, and different identities. For now I write for them.

The first couple take place on Prince Street here in Charlottetown where I grew up. One about a dog, and her gang who aren’t so welcoming to a different looking dog from away. The other is about a girl transferring to a local school, perhaps Prince Street, from far away (Mars) because her mother found a job here.

I hope to keep writing until I get to the point where I can sit down with someone and have them show me all the things I could be doing better. Then find an editor. Then perhaps put words to print.


The Problem With Subscriptions

The problem with subscriptions is often people, myself included, sign-up with the best intentions, but end up not using the service as much as intended, or at all. A few will signup and immediately forget that they subscribed. And as time goes by those charges continue to accrue.

The value of having monthly recurring revenue for a small business is pretty clear; keep your customers happy, the churn rate low, and have revenues you can count on. Our subscription service pays all our costs, while advertising and any other work I can pull in goes to my family. It’s a tidy arrangement for a mind absent of financial acumen like mine. Ideally, revenue would be large enough that I don’t have to rely on advertising and other things, but for now this is the model we have.

When you are small you can’t afford much automatization. You deal with people directly, including those who are angry that they forgot they subscribed to your service, and direct their angst towards you. Which is a drag and requires time out of my day to manage.

Sheryl often tells me to remember to smile, which I seldom do, so when in these situations, I smile, think of a sunny day and deal with it as positively as I can.


Old world

This showed up on my Facebook feed today. Why Apple photos cannot surface old photos with the same panache as FB and Day One is a mystery – it also can’t search.

The first picture was the office I worked out of in China, which came with all the trappings – olympic swimming pool, restaurants, proper running track, boxing ring, gym and on and on and on. Of course it also came with an office with astro turf, because having meetings while lying on fake grass was supposed to produce better results(?). When you are a billionaire CEO you can accumulate things.

The 2nd picture is the door to my current office.

It might look like I’ve fallen from the future to land on a set from West World, and in some ways Charlottetown is very old world, but despite my constant complaints about things, there is a calmness to this place not apparent elsewhere. Though I work more now than I ever did in China, it feels much better to be home.

I do miss the running track.


Birthday messages

In a recent conference call with the CEO of Supercast and his marketing team we briefly discussed our recent uptick in subscriptions and low churn rate. This was part of a broader discussion which I should find time to write about later this coming week.

It’s really difficult to know why people subscribe when they do without explicitly asking them. Podcasting is entirely opaque with very little data unless you take concrete steps to invade peoples privacy, which we don’t.

We ran our first promotion, which might lead you to believe that people are price sensitive, and our pricing is too high. Our ads were more engaging. It could be the time of year when parents invest in things for their children. Or it could be, like one parent said, they finally caved in to their children’s many requests.

There is one other possibility. We wish kids happy birthday on the show and there seems to be an extreme number of October babies. So many, that we may need to produce a show to just keep up with the demand.

The long cold nights of January and February might be a boon to indie children podcasts. We’ll be sure to run a promotion next September and compare the results.


Early mobile photography

I still appreciate and miss the results that early phone cameras produced. These may have been captured with an early Sony Ericsson, likely the T610. I loved those phones and remembered fondly helping an early startup develop ringtones, wallpapers and characters to match the devices they were selling to at the time.


Kids being kids

We must teach our children….
To smell the earth…
To taste the rain…
To touch the wind…
To see things grow…
To hear the sun rise…
And night fall…
To care…

~John Cleal

We were fortunate to be able to send our kids to a private kindergarten and elementary school that emphasized letting them experience the world without shoes. They built things, grew their own food and we hiked through the mountains and the tall grass. They learned about snakes and the dangerous sounds of killer hornets. They would whistle at stray dogs and got chased in return. It was a marvellous time. Catriona to this day continues to talk about elementary school.


Experimentation

Lindsay Patterson talks about their reasons for moving to Spain back in 2017. Coming from the US, healthcare and child care was on their list, but also they left for abit of experimentation.

Our podcast is built around the idea of experimentation — in science, and in business. When we started a podcast for kids, we had the hypothesis that families were eager for high-quality, screen-free entertainment. It turns out we were right. Kids Listen’s survey of parents who listen to podcasts with their kids found that 70% found kids’ podcasts because they were seeking screen-free alternatives. And when kids start listening, they’re hooked. 80% of parents said their kids listen to favorite episodes more than once — with 20% listening ten or more times.

Now that we know kids are listening, and the numbers are there to prove it, it’s time to find out how to make our podcast sustainable. Our hypothesis is that Spain is an inspiring and safe place to take that risk. Sure, our sample size is 1, but it’s a start. Maybe you’ll add to it?

Coming to PEI was in the beginning also abit of experimentation for us. Something new, yet familiar, with what we thought was the comfort of knowing that we would be looked after when sick or during some other calamity. In a place without much in the way of “social gathering with a purpose,” The StartUp Zone provided a soft landing and a cheap place to work.

It’s amazing how the effects of not being able to travel, the rising cost of living, and the lack of confidence in a social safety net has on your desire to take risks, or to experiment. I’m sure that I am not alone in feeling apprehensive about the future, here on the Island, or in Canada in general (economic uncertainty has many follow-on effects).

A couple weeks hiking in Northern Thailand, or a week eating my way from the north to south of Taiwan would be an antidote to some of the malaise, but Taiwan is closed and Thailand requires a 2 week quarantine.

So we enjoy small treats on the Island and hope to not need to see a doctor. I enjoy coffee with my daughter at The Shed, and get to listen to sounds of the Vietnamese and Chinese language. I eat once a week at one of the many Japanese restaurants around town, where you can hear … Japanese. And we recently went to a lobster supper, which I define as local food, where we incidentally got to listen to a Chinese visitor embarrass himself with how disappointed he was with his daughters meal. My daughter goes out for Korean and works at a Taiwanese bubble tea shop where the owners fly in from Taiwan to tell her to work faster. Working in Downtown Charlottetown is in many ways similar to Hsinchu.

These sounds and tastes make living here even more enjoyable.

Why I’m Moving My Podcast to Spain And You Should, Too


Catriona, 18

Somehow this little girl who used to run around Jusco singing songs turned 18 today. It is a cliché but I really don’t know where the time has gone. This morning while getting some coffee near my office I saw a group of young kids excitedly going to dance class, just like she used to, which made me wish I could experience it all over again.


Not my finest moment

I was sitting at the coffee shop while I did my end of week admin debris when I notice my 90 year old uncle in his car parked outside the optometrist office next door.

Getting out of his car after having a short chat, a guy started approaching me to let me know that I should inform Wendell that he ran a stop sign. While he was not particularly aggressive in his approach something about his manner triggered me and I became testy.

It took me many years to learn that in every confrontation, argument, or conflict of any kind, even a minor one such as this, one needs to be calm, polite and empathetic. Once your heart rate rises above baseline, and you loose the ability to think, your ability to choose the correct verbal or physical language for the situation diminishes.

While his delivery was aggravating, he was correct. Wendell didn’t see the stop sign. I should have smiled, said thank you, and moved on.

And now it’s time to encourage my uncle to get off the roads.


Surveillance

I’m not sure how long these have been in place, it’s amazing how one doesn’t notice these eyes encroaching on your privacy, but these cameras on the confed. centre certainly are an ugly accoutrement. It’s not like the building was attractive in the first place but one would think that more subtle methods for surveillance might exist.

While not yet approaching Asian state levels of surveillance, Charlottetown certainly does seem to be trying hard. Is there a crime problem I don’t know about?


Soy Milk Latte

I’m sitting here at what is becoming my second office trying a soy milk Latte, after tasting which I remember that I have always hated soy milk. The kids love of all things soy never took hold with me.

Today is supposed to be a day of writing, but with writing being my worst skill and with no real deadline, I’ve done every other possible task.

Perhaps next I should go home and clean out my son’s closet.


New Habit

Now that Catriona is attending University her schedule has freed up considerably which allows us to start having the ability to enjoy morning coffee and tea together at The Shed. I don’t think we’ve had this much time alone together in years. We don’t talk much, she reads, and I wade through piles of email and such, but I think we both share the characteristic of extended periods of quiet juxtaposed by periods of manic conversation.

She is studying medieval literature at the moment, which I warned her about as I always thought it got in the way of more important things, like the study of medieval music and the drinking of beer. She obviously gets her smarts from her mother as she thinks all the stories are easy, predictable and boring. I remember struggling.

We arrive early (to her) at 8:30am but the prospect of me paying for her tea and car ride into town (I get the feeling my bike would be stolen by end of day) gets her out of bed faster than the school bus ever did.


Undecided

Tomorrow is Election Day and I have still not come to a decision as to who or what party I will cast my vote for. Unlike past elections, held during our brief time back in Canada, there has been little in the way of outreach from party candidates, and with life being busier than the past, I’ve done little to understand their take on the issues that matter to me.

Here are the issues that seem to be pre-occupying my mind of late:

Cost of living. Coming home was in one small part an experiment, could we lead a similar middle class lifestyle that we lived abroad while enjoying a greater work-life balance. Before we left we knew that the medical system here was not comparable in access to what we were used to, but we felt otherwise the numbers worked. Recently at the behest of a friend and mentor, I more closely ran the numbers again (I dislike quant.) and discovered that our experiment has failed. At a time when we should be celebrating success, who the hell makes a living telling bedtime stories, we realize that despite having a household income far above the median, we just can’t make it. In many ways our lifestyle is a shadow of what it was – the cost of living is just too high.

Food has always been more expensive (Atlantic salmon is cheaper in Taiwan for some reason), housing costs are spiralling out of control (a house we thought of buying recently sold for double the price), services and education are multiples more expensive, and Canadian salaries like in Taiwan are depressed.

High taxation. To make matters worse we pay 6-7x the effective tax rate we were paying before and for what (where is the accountability)? PEI doesn’t have true universal health care, you have to pay for dental, eye exams, audiology and for any medications you might need. I have no idea if mental health is covered or where one would go to access that. If you try to look after your physical self, you have to pay for that too – physiotherapy is a thriving business on the Island.

I had this misplaced conception that by returning to Canada we would have access to greater social services, more security, and thus more peace of mind. What the pandemic has taught us is that this is far from the truth. We must be as self-reliant as in the past (in Asia we had no assistance available for anything), which is fine, but again, what do we pay such a high tax rate for.

Universal healthcare. What good is having great doctors if you can’t access medical services? Camren has an ingrown toenail, a minor problem, but one that has a dramatic effect on his quality of life. Competitive athletics are best performed without a swollen infected toe. He’s been told its a 3 month wait for a procedure that we could have been taken care of immediately by walking into any hospital in the past. I had been experiencing an irregular heart beat, was concerned and started my journey at a walk-in clinic. It took me over 6 months to get the prognosis that “if anything bad was going happen it would have happened by now.”

What is frustrating is that while you have to pay for some services, you aren’t allowed to pay for others. I would like more data as to why I have decreased energy levels and if there might be circulatory problems in my left leg. I can’t pay for blood work or get scans from a private clinic and the system here only starts to work when problems get chronic and then you begin the well known long wait.

Before I left the Island for education and work, I was raised by my mother alone on the modest salary she received. We lived in a 3 bedroom duplex, she drove a nice car, I was dressed in nice clothes, and I had regular visits to the doctor. We ate well. Sometimes it was tight, but I didn’t notice any difference between our family and those of what might have been my better off classmates. It would be impossible to have a similar life style today on a single salary. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say, under similar circumstances, you would be food insecure and perhaps at risk of being homeless.

At present, I have no idea which person and party can best represent my concerns. And honestly, I have little faith any will make much progress. Lawrence Macaulay would seem the most qualified, but I’m not sure he has ever stepped foot in Stratford, let alone gone door to door talking to constituents. The Green party’s focus on climate is something I can get behind, but when your boat is already sinking, it’s hard to focus on rising sea levels.

I have about 12 hours before I plan to vote.