Jeff’s Silly Little Blog

Well, here goes nothing: I’m starting a blog. I even paid for a domain and everything, so if this flops, I’m out $48. The word “blog” feels a little mid-2000s-y to me, but you know what? The mid-2000s weren’t such a bad time. They were pretty cool, actually. Let’s bring back baggy basketball shorts and flip phones and Linkin Park and Judd Apatow comedies. And blogs.

The truth is, I’ve felt the need for some sort of creative outlet for a while, and I’m not cool enough for TikTok and not photogenic (videogenic?) enough for a YouTube channel. So this will have to do.

I’ve put a fair amount of thought into what I want this to be, and I’ve concluded that I have no idea. I imagine some posts will essentially be journal entries. To that end, I haven’t decided how vulnerable I want to be, or how many family members I want to offend with what they will consider to be foul language. Mom, if you’re reading this, I am sorry to say that yes, I do occasionally use “the f-word.” In fact, I’ve used it for quite some time. I think I lost my “fuck” virginity in 7th grade when Chase Dyle punched me in the stomach, and I haven’t looked back. I know you think it’s a word for people with limited vocabularies, but it felt good to say it then and it feels good to say it now.

A side note: I remember learning about “code switching” in a psychology class in college — how people change their behavior, including the language they use, in different social situations — and it got me thinking. As far as I know, I’ve somehow managed to not drop a single f-bomb around my parents since that fateful day in the Ottawa Middle School lunchroom. I guess I’m pretty fucking good at code switching. Sorry.

Anyway, from a structural standpoint, I expect most of my posts will be more or less like how this one has started, which is to say definitely disjointed, probably a little narcissistic, but hopefully at least somewhat entertaining. Otherwise, what’s the point? I have a lot on my mind, god dammit, and the people deserve to hear about it!

If I work up enough courage, I might also try my hand at fictional writing. I recently read Stephen King’s On Writing —  a collection of memoirs on how he got his start as a writer, followed by a rough blueprint of his fiction writing process. In many ways, that book was the push I needed to start this blog, and I highly recommend it to anyone reading this. But man, fiction is a whole different beast. Where do you even start? How do you get an idea for something like It or The Green Mile and just run with it? I’m not Stephen King (clearly) so if I ever do take a crack at fiction, I imagine it will be pretty bad. Gotta start somewhere though, right?

This was meant to be a “year in review” post, so perhaps I should start reviewing the year I’ve just had. January of 2024 would be a good place to start.

Actually, it’s not. January was pretty shitty for me. February and March were, too. It’s difficult to fully reflect on that time, because I can honestly say it was the lowest point I’ve ever reached from a mental health standpoint. So not only is it hard to talk about, but it’s hard to remember — so much of it just blurs together. I vaguely remember the Chiefs winning the Super Bowl, and I vividly remember getting a tooth pulled and the awful weeks of recovery that followed. Other than that, my memory is mostly static.

I’ve struggled with depression for a long time — probably since college. I’ve had my fair share of highs and lows over the years, but last winter was the first time I felt it really start to consume me. It’s obviously uncomfortable to talk about, so my solution was to not talk about it. I self-isolated, self-medicated (my “prescriptions” were ethyl alcohol and cannabis, to use the medical terms), and generally stopped giving a shit. Turns out that wasn’t the best way of dealing with it. I had my first panic attack sometime in December of 2023, and several more in the months that followed. I was barely sleeping, which made it impossible to function at work, so I started calling in “sick” on a far too regular basis. This created more anxiety because I knew my boss and coworkers weren’t buying it, and it created guilt because, despite how little I enjoy my job even on a good day, I do care about my patients, and their treatment was suffering as a result of my mental health. In short, I was going through it. So I decided to make a change.

On March 20th — the first day of spring, coincidentally — I took another one of those “sick” days and scheduled a meeting with my boss. For some context, my boss is awesome. Genuinely the coolest and nicest person. I wasn’t sure how the meeting would go, but I knew I needed to be transparent with her, because I could tell she was getting frustrated with my work attendance. I told her what I was going through, how and why it was affecting my job performance, and ultimately why I needed to leave my full-time PT position. I cried quite a bit which, let me tell you, being a 28 year old male crying in front of your 60-something female boss, that’s a humbling experience. But it needed to happen, and I’m glad it happened. And my boss, being who she is, was incredibly kind and supportive, and we worked out a way for me to reduce my workload while I figured out my next steps.

That was March. Here we are in January, and I still haven’t figured out those next steps. If you talked to me back then, I would’ve told you I was planning on going to flight school and becoming a pilot. That plan never quite got off the ground (pun intended) (there are so many flight-related puns, it’s ridiculous). Turns out it’s quite a long and expensive process to get a commercial pilot’s license, and I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but everything else is expensive these days (thanks, Obama), and I can’t very well afford to go back to school full time and toss a bunch more money onto the pile of student loans I already have.

For the record, I still do want to be a pilot. It’s an idea that actually excites me. But it’s sitting on the tarmac for now (I’m telling you, I could do this all day). Currently I’m continuing to work two part-time PT positions and dipping my toe into the sales world (as a rep for an orthopedic device company), which is a little scary and a lot different from being a PT. Truthfully, I don’t see myself working in sales long term, but if it helps pay the bills for now, I’ll take it.

So far I’ve talked about my struggles with mental health and career uncertainty — super fun year in review post, I know. How about a few highlights?

In April, I went to New Orleans for a friend’s bachelor party. It was the most fun weekend I’ve had in a long time. It was an awesome group of guys, the weather was perfect, we happened to be there for a big live music festival, we won some money playing craps, we got to see LeBron James play basketball in person (born too late to explore the Earth, etc etc) … my friends and I perhaps overuse the phrase “immaculate vibes” when we all get together, but I can’t think of a more fitting way to sum up that trip.

In October, I went to Austin, Texas to see my first Formula 1 race in person. If you know me, you know that F1 has become my recent obsession, partly because of Netflix’s Drive to Survive dramamentary, and partly because of how handsome and loveable Lando Norris is. The race was a bit of a bummer, with Lando getting a questionable penalty that dropped him from 3rd to 4th (fuck you, Max Verstappen), and I didn’t have the best view of the track, but it was a super fun experience nonetheless and I’m already looking forward to the next race I get to go to (Montreal in June? (eyeballs emoji)). Is there a career that involves going to all of the F1 races as a fan? Perhaps I could be an entrepreneur in this area. If anyone wants to be an angel investor in this very exciting business venture, let me know.

I don’t know if the two events are related, but the day after I got back from Austin, I adopted Pearl. I really can’t say what led me to do it. I’d been browsing some animal shelter websites for a few weeks before that, in a very non-committal way. But I was off work that day, and her picture on the website showed off her beautiful eyes, so I decided to drive to Ottawa and see for myself. The sappy part of me would say she called out to me, but truthfully, the decision to take her home was mostly made on a whim. I had always told myself whenever I got a dog, it would be small, low energy, and wouldn’t shed. Pearl checks zero of those boxes. But she grew on me very quickly, and I can confidently say adopting her was one of the best decisions I made in 2024. There have been some tough moments — just ask my brother in law’s cat, Frank, or my parents’ cat, Micah — but the good outweighs the bad, and taking care of her has taught me a lot about myself. Funny how pets can do that.

A couple of other things that I plan to expand on in future posts, but bear mentioning as part of a year in review:

My grandfather (“Papa”) passed away in October, after a steady decline in health for the last five or so years. It was hard to see him deteriorate, and even harder to see the toll it took on my dad, who was his primary caretaker. Father-son relationships can be complicated, but my dad was undoubtedly a good son.

That fucking election. Yeah, I’ll have a lot to write on that topic, and on how things unfold in the next weeks and months. If you’re a Trump supporter, I imagine you won’t want to read those posts.

There is so much more I want to write about. Maybe trying to condense 366 days (shoutout leap years) into a single blog post was a bit ambitious, but the cool thing is, I can always write more posts, and I plan to.

2024 was an up and down year, but what I can definitively say is I learned more about myself than perhaps any year prior. There’s a lot that still doesn’t make sense to me, and I suspect it’ll always be that way, but maybe this silly little blog (hey, that’s a good name, I think I’ll keep it) will help me make some sense of it. And if I’m really lucky, maybe it’ll help someone else make some sense of stuff as well. Otherwise, what’s the point?