It’s Pride Weekend in Toronto and now seems like as good a time as any to put some thoughts on digital paper and “come out,” in a way.

I’m gender non-conforming, and I’m finally ready to embrace that more publicly than I have over the last 55+ years of my life. The way I feel isn’t new. What is new is that I’m finally confident enough to stop hiding this part of myself.

This stuff is all very complicated, and I can assure you it’s something I’ve always struggled mightily to understand about myself. Over the last couple of years, I’ve been gradually showing more of this side of me to my friends and family.

I have always wrestled with body image. It’s not so much that I think I’m in the wrong body (aka gender dysphoria), but rather that I feel more comfortable and happy when I can express myself in less masculine and more feminine ways.

For example, in 2022, I started removing the hair from my legs and underarms. I do it because I prefer how it looks and it feels “right” to me. I strongly dislike body hair, and especially my own. Initially I was fearful that people would notice and judge me for it. Maybe they do, but I don’t really care anymore — I’m happier this way. Recently, I’ve started laser hair removal on a whole bunch of my body so I just don’t have to deal with it anymore.

Probably the next big frontier is going to be the clothes I wear. This is also an area where I’ve slowly been making changes over the last few years. I used to hide my upper body under sleeves because I have a less-than-muscular physique. I started to embrace how I look by wearing sleeveless shirts over the last couple of summers, and I’d like to start wearing more tank tops at some point.

I switched to shorter shorts in the summer last year, and I’m still looking for some good leggings or tights I can wear in the spring and fall. I find them super comfortable, both how they feel and how they make me feel. The fact that I can wear tights to run in the winter without anyone asking questions has always been a plus.

I recently bought a running skirt from Lululemon and I’ve been wearing it about half the time I go out for a run instead of the Pace Breaker shorts I normally use. Today I showed up to my usual club run in the skirt and it was fine. I explained that I like how I look in it and that I enjoy running in it.

None of this feels like a sudden change. It’s more that I’ve finally stopped pretending the feelings aren’t there. I’ve been figuring this out my whole life, mostly quietly, mostly alone in my own head. The difference now is that I’m actually engaging with it instead of tucking it away.

I don’t know exactly where it leads, and I’m okay with that. For the first time, I’m letting myself find out.

A year ago today, June 16, 2025, I walked into my therapist office for the first time, sat down, and spent 75 minutes telling her about some of the things I was afraid of.

Since then I’ve been back fifteen more times (well, fourteen – one was virtual). I’ve talked a lot more about those fears, and slowly I’ve learned how to face them and how to be a happier person. Over the past year I’ve confronted a bunch of the things I was afraid of, and in every single case I found that my fear was either not justified or it was something I could overcome.

I started being more honest with the people around me whether it was my spouse, my family, my friends, my co-workers or my boss. If I needed something from someone, I asked for help. If I wanted someone to stop doing something, I asked them to stop.

I also started asking more of myself. Be more courageous and less fearful. Be more honest with myself. Be less scared of letting other people see the person I am, and always have been.

I put aside a lot of fear and accepted a promotion at work that I’d always really wanted but had always been too afraid to even admit that I wanted. It’s been great. I went to the dentist after avoiding it for a long time, and it was fine (even the root canal, which wasn’t nearly as awful as people make it out to be). I stopped hiding the music I actually like (Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Dean) or the books I actually read (a lot of cheesy romance novels).

I still have a lot of work to do, but it gets a little easier every day.

It’s been a few years since I’ve wanted to run a marathon, but I’ve signed up for one later this year. I’m slowly ramping up training for the Royal Victoria Marathon on October 11, 2026 in Victoria, B.C.

I don’t really know what the reasons are for doing this again, but it’s just become something I want to do later this year and Victoria makes a lot of sense.

Obviously Lindsey lives there so I can combine this with a visit with them and their boyfriend Mathew. I like Victoria a lot and the marathon looks well-organized and the course is scenic and beautiful. The time of year allows me to train over the spring, summer and fall and not during the winter. It’s long enough away that I can easily train up to decent mileage before a “serious” 18-week program starts.

I’m going into this one with a different mindset. I usually try to run for a time, but I think this time around that the “A” goal will just be to run it and have a good time. If a decent time comes out of that, well great. But it’s not my primary goal.

iPhone users, I made an app that looks at the weather and analyzes multiple factors to tell you whether you should run now or later and what to expect.

You can also see a sweet visual of the next five days with each hour scored and colour-coded to help you plan out your runs.

Dial in your preferences across multiple factors like wind, precip, temp and more. And even adapt the ratings depending on if you are hardcore or more of a fair weather runner. Turn on Snark mode for some additional motivation.

Did I also mention you can load in recurring and one-time events like club runs or races so you can obsess over the forecast leading up to the big day? It’s completely free with no ads or tracking or any of that nonsense. Even the optional AI Insights run privately and fully on-device using Apple Foundation Models.

Learn more: RunnerCast.app

For the past year, like most tech companies, we’ve been experimenting with AI. Our engineering team tried GitHub Copilot. Product managers (myself included) dabbled with ChatGPT for writing. Design explored some generative tools. It felt incremental, like adding another app to the toolkit.

Something shifted in the last few months, and I’m still processing what it means.

I’m director of product management at a wholesale domain registrar. A few months ago, our engineering teams started using Claude Code for significant portions of their development work. Not just autocomplete or boilerplate generation, but actual feature implementation. And some of them got fast. Like…really fast.

That’s when the inflection point hit us: the constraint had moved.

For years, the rhythm of product development was predictable. Product would spend a few weeks researching and writing detailed requirements. Design would iterate on flows and interfaces. Then we’d hand everything to engineering, and the waiting game would begin. Engineering was almost always the bottleneck, not because they were slow, but because building software was genuinely hard and time-consuming.

Now engineering is telling us they can build in days what used to take weeks. They’re potentially asking for the next set of requirements before we’ve even finished validating the last release. The bottleneck has shifted, and it’s pointing directly at the rest of us.

This isn’t a comfortable realization. It means my team in product management needs to fundamentally rethink our process. We can’t spend three weeks perfecting a PRD when engineering could have built and deployed two iterations in that time. We need to get faster at research, faster at writing, faster at decision-making. Fortunately, we can use the same AI tools that sped up engineering. I’m now using Claude to help synthesize user feedback, draft requirements, and analyze data. But it’s not just about using AI to do the same work faster; the real shift is realizing and learning how we can work differently.

When engineering can move this quickly, rapid prototyping becomes viable in ways it never was before. We can test three different approaches to a feature in the time it used to take to build one. We can learn from real user behavior instead of debating hypotheticals over a Google Meet call. The whole product development cycle can become more experimental and more iterative.

Here’s the uncomfortable part: every team needs to make this shift, or they risk becoming the new bottleneck. Our design team is now grappling with how to do rapid wire-framing and exploration of user flows at a pace that matches engineering’s new velocity. Customer support needs to think about how AI can help them process feedback and identify patterns faster. Even our compliance and legal teams are starting to ask how they can accelerate their processes.

The teams that figure this out will thrive. The ones that don’t will find themselves constantly apologizing for holding everyone else up.

I don’t think that this means we’re working any harder. We’re working differently. Busy work or tedium is what’s going away, allowing more time for thinking or discussion. It is sometimes more mentally taxing because less of my work day is spent messing with data in Excel or typing into a Confluence doc.

This is what an actual inflection point feels like: not the slow adoption of a new tool, but the moment when the tool changes the constraints of the entire system. When the question stops being “how can we use AI?” and becomes “how do we reorganize our work now that AI has fundamentally changed the pace?”

We’re still figuring it out. Some days it feels exciting. Other days it feels chaotic. But I’m certain we can’t go back to the old rhythm.

The companies that will succeed in the next few years won’t just be the ones that adopt AI tools. They’ll be the ones that reorganize their entire operating rhythm around the new possibilities those tools create. That’s a much harder challenge than buying some software licenses, and I suspect most organizations haven’t fully reckoned with it yet.

We’re trying to. Ask me in six months how it’s going.

I’m just back from a week spent in Bonn, Germany, and the highlight of the trip (outside of some very productive meetings) was sauna. The Marriott hotel I stayed at had a wellness area in the lower level that included multiple different saunas, a cold plunge, various showers and a relaxation area. There was also a pool, gym and cardio room with the usual machines for maintaining fitness routines.

I took advantage of the sauna most nights while I was there. It was my first experience with sauna in Germany and I have to say, the Germans do sauna right.

The Right Stuff

First up, the finnische sauna (Finnish sauna) was hot—90-95ºC—which is exactly what I’m looking for. There was a bio-sauna (cooler) and also an infrarot sauna (infrared) and dampfbad (steambath), but those aren’t my preference. That seemed to be a preference I shared with most of the people who were using the wellness area—almost everyone chose the finnische sauna.

Next, the kaltbad (cold bath) was quite cold. Not freezing like the one at Element Outdoor Sauna in Toronto, but cold enough to provide a more than adequate contrast between hot and cold. There were also a variety of showers and even a cold water bucket for those that preferred something other than immersion.

The relaxation area in the middle offered large lounge sofa-style seats and an electric fireplace to provide some visual interest while I sat between the sauna and cold plunges/showers.

The relaxation area.

The finnische sauna which was never empty and not nearly as bright as this.

Textilfrei

German saunas are strictly textilfrei (textile-free). This means no bathing suits is not just the custom, but the rule. Wearing a swimsuit is actually considered quite unhygienic because synthetic materials can off-gas in high heat, and trapped sweat against the skin is regarded as unclean.

While nudity is mandatory inside the saunas and steam rooms, most everyone wears a towel or a bathrobe and also most have flip-flops or sandals while going between rooms or lounging in the relaxation area. You will for sure see naked people and also be seen naked by everyone else in a German sauna, but it’s a level playing field. It very quickly becomes completely normal because it is completely normal.

One very important thing to know is that skin should never touch the wood of the sauna benches. That means everyone brings a large enough towel to sit or lie on so that every part of the body—including feet—is on the towel. This is a primary rule of etiquette; if you are sitting on the top tier of the sauna, for example, you drape your towel so your butt and your feet are never in direct contact with the wood. If you lean back, you’d drape your towel behind your back too.

Contrast Therapy

Generally the process is to have a quick shower before entering the sauna. When entering, it’s customary to say hallo as you enter. Most everyone already in the sauna will say hallo back. If there’s no space, then you wait outside or try one of the other sauna types. Otherwise, you find a spot, drape your towel and take a seat. Some people lounge, but most will just sit. The higher the tier, the hotter it is.

After about 15-20 minutes, you leave the sauna to go do the cooling sequence. Sometimes people will say tschüss when leaving the sauna which is something like cheers in English.

After leaving the very hot sauna, you first get a little fresh air and then you use a cold hose, cold plunge, shower or a bucket full of cold water to shock your system. This temperature contrast is what provides the health benefits, boosting circulation and the immune system.

German saunas are almost entirely quiet places. The saunas themselves and the relaxation rooms are strictly silent. It’s a time to meditate and unplug. You won’t see anyone on their phones since those are strictly prohibited and left behind in a locker in the changing rooms.

Once you’ve “enjoyed” a cold plunge or cold shower, it’s nice to sit for about 10-15 minutes to just relax and let your heart rate come down. You’ll know when it’s time to do it all over again, starting in the sauna and repeating the process once or twice more.

What About Co-Workers?

Given that I was there on a business trip and 20 of my work colleagues were staying at the same hotel, there was always the potential that one of them might have decided to enjoy some sauna at the same time as me. Was I afraid that I’d come face-to-face (and more) with someone I worked with?

In this context, it wasn’t a concern for me at all. It is understood that this is the local custom, and I assumed any of my colleagues who came down to the sauna would be just as comfortable with the environment as I was. When everyone follows the same cultural etiquette, the potential for social discomfort seems to evaporate.

Back Home in T.O.

Now that I’m back in Toronto, it’s back to life mostly without sauna. I will definitely make a point of getting to Element more regularly and one of the nice things is that it is private and so you can go textile-free if you choose. Other than that, I guess I’ll have to wait for my next trip to Europe to enjoy more sauna like I was able to experience this week.

I tried contrast therapy at Element Outdoor Sauna today, finally checking it off my bucket list. While I’m already a fan of sauna and cold plunge, Element takes it to a different level.

I booked an introductory session with the owner, Denise, to get the full experience—including the science behind the practice and coaching on how to breathe through the extremes. I told her I was chasing the challenge of it, as well as the mental and physical health benefits.

We started with an info session standing on the deck. I was already in my bathing suit, so the exposure to the elements started before I even touched the water with the outdoor temperature around -1ºC. Denise walked me through how the body reacts to thermal shock, and we practiced breathing techniques to prepare for the cold.

Element uses a Morozko Forge Ice Bath, which is top-tier equipment. This isn’t just cold water; there were literal chunks of ice floating on top that had to be moved aside so I could step in. The key was establishing my breath before entering to suppress the body’s natural gasp reflex.

I managed 60 seconds on the first round. It was a shock, but manageable. After some movement on the deck to reset, I moved to the sauna.

The heat was impressive—over 100ºC and bone-dry. I stayed in for nearly 25 minutes. It was intense, but sustainable. Denise was there to check in and guide me on safety and timing. I did like that she left me alone when possible (sauna time) and stuck with me when needed (ice bath).

The second ice bath was the real test. I aimed for a longer duration and submerged my arms and hands. I made it past 90 seconds, though I had to pull my hands out briefly because the sensation was physically painful. Apparently this is quite a common reaction.

Uniquely, there is no warm-up phase after the final plunge. You finish cold, do some movement exercises, and then get dressed.

It was a lot of information to absorb in an hour, but having Denise there to talk me through the process was valuable. It was exactly the challenge I was looking for, and I’ll definitely be heading back soon.

There’s nothing better than waking up and having an existential crisis. I can’t be the only one who this happens to. But here I am.

Some days I can put it aside and push the feeling of doom aside and get to work. Other days it’s a struggle to get myself to believe that I’m even capable of making it through the morning let alone the rest of the day, week, month or (shudder) the year.

If I have a task to do that is clear and well-defined, then sitting down and just picking it up and doing it is usually easy. Push out the noise and focus on that for a bit. Flow comes and shit gets done and I feel like a winner.

But all too often…poof. A Slack message about something stupid and trivial, or email about something that isn’t my fucking problem or some other distraction triggers me and it’s gone.

The worst part is that the good flow is replaced by a different kind of flow—a negative state where my entire focus is consumed by feelings of dread, self-doubt, uselessness.

Escaping that state is the complete opposite of the very easy ejection from positive flow. Distractions just add to the mess. Trying to ”think” my way out of it has the reverse effect. The thoughts contribute to a deeper negative state because they are all negative.

I used to be able to go for a run to get out of this world. These days, if I have a good podcast or a favourite album to listen to, then sometimes I can get into a better place if I run my usual route and just drop into a place where I don’t need to think. Put it in autonomous mode and just run the same route, the same turns, the same views.

If the podcast is good, I can replace the negative thoughts with thinking about a problem that isn’t mine. If the song it good, I can consider a lyric that takes me out of my world and into another one. But the moment the run ends, or the podcast is over, or a song that hits too close to home comes on…poof. The negative thoughts flood in. Down into my dark hole I go yet again.

I feel useless. “Well, if it helps, I think you are important and you do good work.” Thanks. It actually doesn’t.

I feel like an imposter. “Well, if it helps, everyone here respects you and thinks you are a great contributor.” Thanks. It actually doesn’t.

I feel like I can’t accomplish anything. “Well, if it helps, here’s a big list of all the things you’ve done that matter.” Thanks. It actually doesn’t.

Confronted with evidence that how I feel is incorrect, my natural thought is to assume that the evidence is false or that it doesn’t actually mean anything.

No matter how many times I push the up button to call an elevator, the car heads to the basement as soon as I get on and the doors close.

The most frustrating part of it all is that I know it’s happening. I know I’m doing it. And still… “Going down. Next floor, sub-basement two”.

Man, what is wrong with you? Even when shown evidence to the contrary, you can’t even accept it and be happy? Fuck man. Get your shit together.

I wish.

I’m very much an “Apple” person. I’ve had an iPhone since the 3GS. My first Mac was a 12" iBook G4 that I bought in 2005. I don’t use Gmail, nor do I use Google Search. Instead, I use Fastmail and either DuckDuckGo or Kagi. I do have a YouTube Premium account and I also like Google Gemini a lot.

So I figured I might want to try out Google Photos to see if it has any better editing or search compared to Apple Photos.

It doesn’t. In fact, it’s pretty lacklustre compared to what Apple Photos offers. The search is about the same, but the photo editing on Google Photos is not even in the same league as Apple Photos, never mind the same ballpark.

So yeah…the news is finally out. I’ve taken a new role at work – Director of Product Management. It’s a pretty big step up for me and something that I’ve been hoping to do for many years. With this new role, I’ll have multiple product managers reporting to me and my focus shift from our retail platforms over to building the new wholesale platform that will take us well into the next decade. I’m excited!

Well, the Blue Jays lost. It was a great game, and a great World Series. They came so very close to winning it all, but came up just a bit short in the end.

That’s sports. Keeping it all in context is important. We’re all just watching these guys play and it’s entertainment and escape and a shared experience that our city and country can have together. But it is just sports.

The Blue Jays lost the game, but we all won because of the fun we had over the last few months. There will be another season next year and the Jays will play at least another 162 games in 2026. We’ll be hyped for it just like we were this season.

I’m switching over to watch more hockey now. The Montréal Canadiens have a young team that has been a lot of fun to watch and to root for. They are in first place at the moment and it’s looking like they might have what it takes to go further into the playoffs than they did last season. Let’s hope!

The Blue Jays are in the World Series against the Dodgers and tonight is Game 7. One team will win, one team will lose. I hope we win, but I’m also fine if we lose. Sports is just sports and this has been a season to remember for fans of the team and for the city of Toronto.

I was lucky to attend Game 1 of the ALDS. We went to the Rogers Centre Watch Party for Game 4 and the Scotiabank Arena Watch Party for Game 6. Both were a ton of fun, even though we lost last night.

I really hope that fans of both teams keep it all in context. It’s a game. It’s entertainment. For fans, that’s all it is. Yes, for the players it’s something more and in many cases it has a lot more meaning. Just remember that win or lose, it’s been fun for us fans, Toronto.

Over the last couple of months, I’ve been weighing a pretty big decision. More on that in the coming days, but making decisions is always a challenge for someone who is both a very analytical thinker and also someone who leands very much towards “realist” with a healthy dose of pessimism baked in.

Since the early summer, I’ve been seeing a therapist fairly regularly. One of the things we’ve really focused on in those sessions is to try to understand the things that send me for a loop and the reasons why. I don’t need to get into all that because it’s very much specific to me, and how I think, but figuring all that out over the last few months really helped when it came time to make this big decision.

Knowing what was causing my summer of discontent, I could weigh the different factors and evaluate each against the options I had in front of me. It gave me a level of control that I initially didn’t think I had when this opportunity presented itself. I also knew from therapy that feeling like I was not in control was a big trigger for me and so the realization that I actually had control of this situation removed a lot of the stress.

I actually travelled down to Newport Beach, California as part of the process. I had mostly already committed to the change, but this was the best and maybe the only way for me to validate what I believed to be true when I made the decision. In the end, my sense of what I would be getting myself into was mostly right and in some ways things were better than what I was expecting.

So the decision was made and I feel pretty good about it. Some days I’m still gripped with apprehension (not fear) about it all, but mostly I’m excited about the next couple of years and what I’m embarking on.

I’m currently somewhere over Iowa at about 36,000ft on an Air Canada A220 (née Bombardier CS-300) heading to Denver and then onwards to Newport Beach, California.

I haven’t set foot in the USA since March 18, 2023 and quite honestly, I had zero intentions of visiting until the situation there changed for the better. But some recent changes at work meant that I was invited down to take part in some meetings.

I had actually considered what I would do if I was asked to go the US for work and had mostly decided that I would politely decline. But when push came to shove, I opted to make the trip even though I’m not especially thrilled about it. My work would have been fine with it if I had decided to participate remotely, but it’s not the same, and given the circumstances, it made more sense for me to head down and be there in the room for these meetings.

The whole customs thing was fine – I flew out of Toronto Pearson which has pre-clearance meaning that I was in Canada and could simply withdraw my request to enter the USA if there were any issues. I didn’t really expect any problems entering the USA, and there weren’t any. I’ll be happy once I’m back on an Air Canada Dreamliner heading back to Toronto on Friday.

This is not something I usually do, but I was watching the various baseball games, I listened through the new Taylor Swift album a couple of times. Yes, I realize it’s out at midnight tonight. I saw something fall out of the back of a truck and, well…here we are.

Track 1 - “The Fate of Ophelia”

• Good start to the album. It’s a bit moody out of the gate, but with a fairly catchy chorus. Different sections remind me of some other songs but I haven’t been able to figure out exactly which ones just yet (edit: it’s Lady Gaga “Paparazzi” at one point). Instantly familiar.

Track 2 - “Elizabeth Taylor”

• Evermore vibes but not acoustic. Reputation undertones but not angry. The bridge is great. It took me a few listens to appreciate it.

Track 3 - “Opalite”

• Upbeat and very likeable right from the first listen. This is another track like “The Fate of Ophelia” that felt like I had heard it a million times the first time through. One of my favourites on the whole album and for sure a radio single.

Track 4 - “Father Figure”

• I wanted to hate this one after the first 30 seconds, but it does improve a bit the further in you go. There’s a touch of George Michael “Father Figure” at times, and sprinkle of lounge singer interwoven in as well. It’s not my favourite and might be the lone “skip it” track on the album. Sorry George.

Track 5 - “Eldest Daughter”

• Another one with Folklore/Evermore feels and the piano and then strummed acoustic guitar is really nice. Next tour, this is going to be the song in the acoustic set. She uses every bit of her vocal range – there’s low, quiet Taylor and belt out the high note Taylor. It also reminds me of “Enchanted” in a really, really good way. Top five for me, but I’m also a bit of a sucker for the Swift songs that lean a little country, which this track does.

Track 6 - “Ruin the Friendship”

• From that right into a funky electronic bass groove? Somehow it works. The synth drums and bass are cool. Lyrically it’s a fairly typical “high school love” song and it’ll be popular with the younger Swifties for that reason. It screams Red Era with a bit of a “Girl at Home” theme and vibe.

Track 7 - “Actually Romantic”

• Olivia Rodrigo feels with lots of grungy chord progressions. Decent enough. I might be punishing this one unjustly and it might just need more times and plays.

Track 8 - “Wi$h Li$t”

• A solid track with a very appealing layering that runs through the chorus in an especially nice way. The song takes a bit to get rolling, but as soon as the first chorus hits, things get really good. The “boss up, settle down, gotta wish (wish)…list (list)” bit reminiscent of a number of previous era songs.

Track 9 - “Wood”

• Jackson 5 feel with a very generous helping of modernized 70’s funky fun. This could be the “Shake It Off” for the next decade. It comes in well under three minutes and I kinda wanted it to go on a big longer. The lyrics are, ahem, sexy.

Track 10 - “Cancelled!”

• Moody and dark. It sounds like it was pulled forward from the Reputation era. Very orchestral. My second least favourite song on the album after “Father Figure”.

Track 11 - “Honey”

• The electronic bass and drums are back for another go but with a lovely piano intro. Yet again, it’s familiar and brand new all at the same time. Like many of Taylor’s songs, there are musical and lyrical elements of multiple past albums and tracks interwoven into new songs in such an interesting way. On the right day, at the right time, in the right mood, this is my favourite track. Ahhh…it’s so good.

Track 12 - “The Life of a Showgirl” (featuring Sabrina Carpenter)

• On one hand, this feels like it should be the first track, but “The Fate of Ophilia” is easy strong enough to be the bookend to this track and this song works so well as a closing track its not even funny. I might like the Sabrina Carpenter vocals on her verse more and the bridge channels Olivia Rodrigo again. It’s going to go straight to #1.

Back when Twitter imploded under the weight of new ownership, I initially fled to Mastodon. It was a reasonable choice at the time as it had some momentum, the techie/geek users that I wished to follow and interact with were mostly there, and the federated nature of Mastodon and Activity Pub were appealing to me as a fan of the open web.

But Mastodon growth generally stalled after a time and it never went mainstream. The inherent flaws of the federated nature of Mastodon meant that the “average” user just couldn’t figure it out. The whole server thing, weird apps, toots, alt text zealots and other factors limited Mastodon.

Then Threads came along and for a time it seemed that it had a shot to take over from Twitter and become the next big short post social network. Meta leveraged the massive scale of Instagram to build a user base quickly and the said all the right things about federation in order to appease the nerd types who really wanted to continue to use Mastodon, but also be able to interact with users over on Threads.

I went all in on Threads and it was good…until it wasn’t. I never liked Meta, and it’s CEO/founder. I put aside all those feelings and “trusted” them and their claims that they wanted to be a good social network and an upstanding member of the fediverse. And for a time, it seemed they did. But Meta is Meta and I just couldn’t stomach being part of it all anymore. So I deleted my Instagram and Threads accounts and decided to give Bluesky a go.

Bluesky is interesting, to say the least. It’s really the AT Protocol that’s interesting, but Bluesky is the front-end for ATProto and a bit of a poster child. At first, I was put off by its origin story as a Twitter project that had the support of Jack Dorsey. But Bluesky is not part of Twitter, and Jack hasn’t be involved in a long, long time.

To me it feels like a nice mashup of Mastodon and Threads. There’s an interesting and open protocol at it’s core like Mastodon and Activity Pub. But there’s also a very polished official app which is more akin to Threads. The app ecosystem is more like Mastodon than Threads with multiple different third-party apps out there doing interesting things like photo sharing (Flashes) or feeds (Surf).

The list of interesting projects being built atop the AT Protocol is long.

And then there is Leaflet.pub. This one is particularly interesting to me. It’s an open source tool for shared writing and social publishing. What does that mean? Right now you can create a blog or “publication” on Leaflet and post to it. It’s also something like a Notion/Google Docs hybrid where multiple writers can collaborate on documents and publish them online.

Yes…it’s a little different and maybe a completely new paradigm. From a Bluesky perspective, Leaflet publications are very interesting. They utilize the AT Protocol - posts on your Leaflet publication live on a Personal Data Server (PDS) which is the same thing that powers Bluesky. I won’t get into the nerdy details but with Leaflet, you can now create a blog (and soon a newsletter) atop your Bluesky account. Neat.

In fact, this post lives both on my micro.blog and also on my Leaflet publication. I can see a future where Leaflet is my website, a publication is my blog and Bluesky is my social network. Super interesting!

Lately, I’ve been experiencing some pretty bad symptoms of burnout. It’s not the first time I’ve found myself here, but this time it feels a lot heavier than ever before. I’ve reached out for help in the form of psychotherapy to try to better understand the root causes and also how to manage things. It’s been very beneficial, but I’ve got a ways to go still.

For many years, running has been a helpful refuge from this kind of work/life stress. It was a reset button I could press midway through the workday. Especially since COVID (when my company transitioned to 100% remote work), I would often bust out of the basement office at lunchtime and get in 6-8kms of me time. A podcast or audio book would provide some entertainment or learning and it really helped to take my mind off whatever situations or stressors that my job was offering up that day.

But that’s changed recently. I still run three or sometimes four weekdays plus my weekend runs, but it hasn’t been working the way it used to. Instead of escaping, I now find myself carrying all the overwhelming thoughts along with me. I can put on a podcast and at the end of the run, I don’t even remember what it was about because my brain was too busy processing thoughts of doom and dread and the podcast just went in one ear and out the other.

As I said to my therapist the other day, being alone with my thoughts is not a great place to be lately. Needless to say, it’s been a difficult summer. As someone who is quite literally a professional problem solver in my day job as a product manager, not being able to quickly identify a root cause and apply a solution has proven to be very frustrating.

I thought for a long time that I could get through what I was dealing with by using various coping strategies, but eventually those stopped working. That was the big flashing sign for me that I needed to seek help. I can confidently say that psychotherapy works. Having good supports in my relationships at home and at work has been a big help as well. If you are struggling with mental health, burnout, depression or anything else, do ask for help.

I’ve done a variety of streaks over the last bunch of years. I find the whole streak concept to be a decent motivator for things like fitness, daily tasks or trying to establish or break habits.

But sometimes a streak can be less than positive and for that reason, I think it’s more valuable to “break” a streak if you find it isn’t providing positive motivation anymore.

An example of this for me is something like the Wordle streak or completing the New York Times crossword. Wordle is an interesting one because you can lose your streak even if you still do the puzzle everyday because if you don’t get the word in six guesses, you lose the streak even though you put in the effort. That seems a bit counter productive to me and for that reason, I think it’s best to not care too much about that one.

Something like waking 7,500 steps a day is another one that I think is hit and miss. Sometimes life just gets in the way and maybe you can’t get out to do all the steps. For example, if you are travelling by plane or something and it’s just not possible to walk the 6-7km needed in the day. For situations like that, I’ll just lower my daily goal to something that is reasonable for that day (or week) and continue the streak. For me, it’s not “7,500 steps a day”, but rather “do a good bit of daily walking”.

Keep your streaks in perspective and don’t get too invested in keeping them up for streak’s sake. Remember the real goal of whatever you are tracking with a streak and focus on that instead. If you like the break that doing the Wordle provides, then do the Wordle. But don’t fret if you miss one…it’s not about “winning” but rather about taking some time to do it.

My daily routine for the last little bit has been to wake up, go for a swim, make a coffee, do the Wordle, The Mini and the New York Times Crossword. Now that we’re not at the cottage anymore, the swim part of that routine will have to go away since I don’t have easy access to a lake or a pool.

I could replace that with a 5km run, but I don’t think I want to run every day for a while. And I also like having the run to split my workday in half.

But I will continue to get up, make coffee and do the puzzles because they are a good way to get my brain engaged and ready to face the day.

We’re just back from a lovely week at a cottage down near Perth, Ontario. It’s on the north side of Christie Lake which is a very nice, clean and deep freshwater lake. We were at this cottage last July as well and as I did last year, I made a point of doing some “wild swimming” every morning when I woke up.

Wild swimming is what I call swimming. Over the last few years, people have seemingly discovered that you can swim in lakes, rivers and even the ocean! Amazing. Who knew that you could swim somewhere other than a swimming pool? Me. I knew.

In the summertime I wake up most mornings between 5:45am and 6:00am (right around sunrise). Each day on this cottage visit, I quietly got out of bed and made my way down the 40 or so steps to the dock on the lake. After taking a photo to document the time and lake conditions, I made my way off the dock and out into the water for a swim.

Sometimes it was five minutes and sometimes it was more like 10-15 minutes. But whatever the case, I always made sure I start the day by wading into the lake. It’s always peaceful, quiet and serene. No boats, no traffic, no sounds of anything other than the odd loon and the quiet splashes I make wading in and swimming around in the water. Just a few moments to wake up and be there for a bit before the day starts.

I also went for one swim late at night at around 9:30pm That is a decidedly different experience. The moon is the only illumination and the water changes from being transparent to being completely black with no sunshine to illuminate the depths. It’s just as quiet though, with fireflies on the banks and the odd loon call coming in across the darkness of the lake.

Here’s my photos from each day.

I live in what would be considered one of the more walkable areas of Toronto - the Upper Beach, or Birch Cliff area. We have a streetcar line (503) about 600m from our front door that runs to downtown. There is a bus route (12 & 117) about 100m from our front door that goes to a subway station (Victoria Park) that is 1.5km from our front door. The regional GO Transit train stop is 1.6km from our front door.

I can walk to three large grocery stores within about 1.2km from our front door, and two of them are about 700m from our front door. We are about 2km from the lake, complete with a boardwalk and sandy beaches where you can stand-up paddle board and even swim (if you like cold water).

There is a nice, pretty walkable area on Kingston Road with some small shops like a good coffee shop, a florist, nail salons, a book store, clothing stores, a thrift shop, and a pretty big YMCA with a pool, fitness centre and programs for all ages.

And yet, compared to a similar neighbourhood in Amsterdam, it sucks here.

Amsterdam is Different

We spent a few days in Amsterdam in early June, living in a lovely Airbnb that was in the Amsterdam-Zuid neighbourhood. At first glance, it’s very much like the area we live in. There’s a tram line that will take you into Amsterdam Centraal, or to Amsterdam Zuid train station. There are shops and a “main street” area where you will find things like a florist, book store, restaurants, coffee shops and a grocery store.

Kingston Road in our area of Toronto is a terrible road and is used heavily by people going from downtown Toronto to the east-end suburbs and places like Pickering, Ajax and even Oshawa.

On Kingston Road, there’s a constant stream of cars through our neighbourhood. They clog the streets, race through at well over the posted 40km/h speed limit and generally make a mess of the entire place. Traffic is a nightmare at the best of times and, as a result, the cars head to the residential streets to get around the traffic which makes those areas dangerous to pedestrians.

The streetcar on Kingston Road is terrible. It takes ages to get downtown because it’s mixed in with all that car traffic. You can very easily outrun it on foot. Cycling, if it wasn’t basically a death sentence (trust me on this), is easily the fastest way to get into the city.

Our nearby grocery stores have giant parking lots out front and the store is positioned in the back corner of the lot, meaning you have to walk across the parking lot if you dare do something crazy like walk to the store.

Beethoven straat in Amsterdam is a beautiful street. The shops are lovely and while there is some traffic on the road, it’s calmed with the use of narrower lanes and other measures that force drivers to slow down. The tram has priority at intersections. There are bike lanes and wide sidewalks that encourage people to use those modes of transportation to do things like take the kids to school, or pick up groceries or visit a coffee shop or restaurant.

The local grocery is an Albert Heijn which, by North American standards, is pretty small. The entrance is pedestrian-friendly and car-hostile. There is literally no parking. Nobody drives to do groceries. Instead, people pick up a few things a few times a week. Sometimes they stop on the way home from work. Or they bike over and grab what they need for the next day or two. Nobody does a “big” grocery run like they do in Toronto.

The Problem is Cars

We own a car because we live in Toronto. We would love to get rid of it because it’s a 2011 and needs replacing, but it’s basically impossible to be car-free in our neighbourhood. Not having a car in Toronto would suck. It’s not impossible…but it would be a major headache.

Despite the fact that we have ample transit options within a short walk from our home, it all sucks. It’s infrequent outside of weekdays and it’s slowed by all that traffic a lot of the time. Maybe we could use a car-share service when we needed a car, but that’s also not great in Toronto (yet).

If we lived in Amsterdam, we would definitely not have a car because having a car in Amsterdam would suck. There’s no place to park it and it’s really more inconvenient to try to use a car in Amsterdam because the city is not built for cars. It’s built for people who walk, bike and use transit.

So we’re stuck here in our crappy car-centric neighbourhood with our car. We love our neighbourhood, but it could be so much better if somehow Toronto could become less car-centric. A few things would help but there is no chance they would ever happen.

1. We should ban parking on Kingston Road and make the streetcar lanes for the streetcars and not for the cars. That would destroy the commuting route for all the people who use our neighbourhood as a quasi-highway to get from their suburb to downtown each morning and back again in the afternoon. Those people can take the 401 and the DVP highways and if it takes 30 minutes longer, well, too bad.
2. We should make the neighbourhood streets impossible to use to get from main road to main road. Some bollards or even a series of one-way streets that prevent through traffic would dramatically reduce the number of cars using those streets. Of course, it should be possible to bike through those streets because we want to encourage cyclists to use these streets to get around.
3. We should put a smaller grocery store on our main street. The “big” grocery stores should be torn down and rebuilt at the front corner of the lot, incorporated into housing so that they meet the street. Put a bit of parking around back for those that still want to drive, but make it so that people on foot or using bikes don’t have to cross the parking lot to get to the entrance.

This Will Never Happen

Politically, this will never happen. The outcry from people who drive through our neighbourhood would be massive. And even those who live here wouldn’t have the vision to see what our neighbourhood could be like if we removed the focus on the car.

So instead, we’re stuck here. Stuck owning a car. Stuck dealing with crappy transit. Stuck cycling on dangerous roads and streets. Stuck with getting pedestrians getting run down by cars (there have been multiple car/pedestrian “accidents” in our area including more than one fatality in the past few years).

I’ve always just used the standard(ish) formula to determine my max heart rate and then the various heart rate zones to train in. The one I liked is the 207 - 0.7 x age method. For me that results in a max heart rate of 170bpm.

Recently, I was watching some YouTube videos that suggested it would be far better to determine your actual max heart rate through an informal or formal fitness test. So, today I set out to do that.

The run was structured like this:

• Easy’ish first kilometre to get at least a little bit warmed up and ready to push things hard.
• Two more kilometres at escalating pace to get up to a higher heart rate and ready the body and mind for a big effort.* 800m at close to maximum effort to ramp things up and stress the body more.
• Short slower 400m to recover and then…
• A very hard effort for as long as was sustainable, on a moderate incline just to add to the fun.

The result of this was that I hit 161bpm at the top end of that last effort. I probably could have gone another 15 seconds and maybe pushed up the heart rate a few bpm more, but that was me really giving it everything. So let’s call it 165bpm?

That seems reasonable to me, although the various calculations would have me at about 170bpm. That seems a bit high for me, but I also have a genetically lower heart rate including a resting heart rate in the low 40’s and when I’m really working on the marathon training, in the high 30’s.

I might repeat that test at some point here and perhaps push just a bit more, or maybe just run a flat out 5km on a track and see what happens. The other option would be to do a proper VO2 Max and max heart rate test at one of those places that hooks you up to a mask on a treadmill and tries to get you to pass out while running.

We humans tend to notice milestones. Turning 37 is not a big deal but turning 40 means a special party. It’s nothing special when the stock market hits 9,642, but at 10,000? That’s a big deal. I remember the massive parties around the world for Y2K including a massive fireworks show at the Toronto waterfront. In 2001, there were no fireworks off the CN Tower and we probably just went to bed early.

Running Milestones

Running has some of the same things. We have 5km and 10km races. There are 10 milers. Things get a bit weird with the half marathon and marathon thanks to some odd history that may or may not be true but after that, 50km and 50 mile ultras are special.

A lot of runners are looking back at 2024 right now as Strava has dropped their “Year in Sport” round up on their app. Many, myself included, are looking at our goals for 2024 and seeing how we did.

I started the year with a goal to hit 2,400km in 2024. That’s 200km per month and it’s a total I have hit in the past. Everything has to go pretty well to get there and of course, a few things did not go too well this year so 2,400km was out of reach.

I missed a week and a half with COVID-19 in May, after the BMO Vancouver Half Marathon. And I fell on a run on July 21 and busted my finger pretty badly. That cost me 4.5 weeks and a lot of fitness lost.

After that, I revised my annual goal to 1,600km and then more recently, to 1,000 miles (1,609km). I’m just a couple of days from topping that total for the year. I’m sitting at 1,595.6km right now which is 991.5 miles. Saturday’s 8km will push me past 1,600km for the year, but I’ll need Sunday’s run to get over 1,000 miles.

Goals Matter

Tracking goals and milestones like this are important providers of motivation throughout the year. At the start of each new year, I always set some goals and track them; maybe it’s to run 2,400km, or to do 12 half marathons, or to run more than 250 times.

Personal bests in various race distances are always great goals to set and go after, but at some point the personal bests just aren’t attainable anymore. I don’t know that I can get back to my 5km PB anymore, for example. But annual goals are far more attainable since you can alter them based on your current level of fitness or other factors.

I’ll be putting some thought into my 2025 goals in the coming weeks and I’ll be sure to put them down on “paper” here. Maybe 2,025kms is a good total to try for?