recently - feb '26 ▽
…and what better way to disconnect the internet than a trip to the island! Right on cue, a friend reached out about a hotel deal, asked if I was up for a 3-day trip. Obviously!
A few days later, we're killing time at the Tsawwassen Quay market (we missed the ferry), then aboard a ship to Swartz Bay!
Once we got to Victoria, it was a straight beeline to the hotel to drop our bags and then off to the streets! The book stores, the quaint cafes, the eccentric decor shops, all of it! We even did a ghost tour later that night that pointed out details I totally missed, like how the street lamp post just before the hotel had an eerie sculpture attached matching 11 others scattered about the city.
Loved the hotel's restaurant and its views. One of the nights, my friend finally put me on Bridgerton and I was surprised (never watched it 'cause of the memes, saw someone sniffing their hand after handshake and just went like chale chale 🙄). After the first episode, I was like, wait, this is a good story and kept saying that until I caught up with the entire series long after the trip.
Also, quaint that I was watching Bridgerton (with its Victorian-ish aesthetic), in a Victorian-style chateau, in a city named Victoria!
The next day we toured the parliament building[1] and the Royal BC Museum, which had these incredible historical recreations that you could walk through. They had a string art world map showing migration to BC. There was no thread from Ghana, so I added one.
The last day we bumbled through the streets all the way up to Craigdarroch castle (definitely underrated). I liked the preserved china, stained windows and Dunsmuir's family lore, all set against the gold-rush backdrop, seeing how different it was from Ghana's.
Something about this trip felt like living between time. Walking the city without the demands of routine, in a place that's not home. It was the first week of Feb (def. not tourist season), and it rained like 60% of the time. The city didn't care and I liked that.
I enjoyed ending the trip just as we started: walking around pointing things out, grossly underplanning nutrition to the point where we walked like zombies back from the castle looking for any sort of food. We settled at an Earl's.
Glad we got food before heading out, any later and we'd miss the ferry. Most of the ride was watching S01E04 of Bridgerton on a DIY TV setup.
After the episode, my friend invited me to the deck where I stood for a couple of minutes.
Staring through the fog at the dark waters atop the ship felt like walking up to foggy crossroads at the end of the world.
Later, I started reading into boating and fogs, for fun. A surprising tip from a marine engine manufacturer in Wisconsin:
don't stare out at the fog, but instead look at the intersection of the water and the fog. when peering into an endless abyss, it's very easy to become disoriented and steer your boat in circles
My sabbatical switches phases this month from resting (re: burnout) to re-orientation, i.e. yes we need a break, but where are we going now? Broskoski (are.na founder) has good framing for this state: 'staying connected to your radar'. For me, methods have mostly been via negativa (doing less rather than more of something).
First was cutting back all the feeds (fr fr), disconnecting the internet. Did some digital gardening instead: a colophon, a collection page for all my writing and some reading.
Aside: Cutting back on feeds
Ran the whole gamut. Deactivated twitter (the non-constructive ai discourse was killing me), deleted Tiktok (short-form video diffused my radar the most) , deleted Substack (was supposed to replace twitter but that backfired). Even logged out of my RSS reader with 150-something feeds and podcast app. What remains is Bluesky for small social, and YouTube for background sounds like the one I'm listening to while typing this.
The second thing to reduce was shadowboxing. When you're navigating foggy thickets, anything can look like a ghoul. The tree branch, dangling willow, rocks…but it's really your fears wanting the ghoul there.
The biggest shadow for me was financial insecurity. It's been 3 months of seeing very little income and despite knowing fully well this was something I'd deal with, going through it is something else. It took the form of needing cheaper rent IMMEDIATELY since that's my biggest fixed cost. After a paranoid week of craiglisting and checking out a place in the West End, I just opened a spreadsheet and ran the numbers. Even with a new place at my target budget, I'd only be buying myself 1 extra month. All that plotting for 1 month! Instead, I texted my landlord and audaciously asked for a big discount, they countered and we settled somewhere in the middle. This whole thing was funny 'cause at work I would be looking through perf traces to figure out where cycles are being wasted in code but it didn't come as naturally this time. The fear was pre-rational.
Another shadow: jealousy. It's promo-cycle season and seeing peers (like in the investment banking space) climbing ladders had me questioning whether this pause was the right move. But I've noticed jealousy, at least for me, takes form when I'm not sure of myself. It had little to do with them and everything to do with wanting certainty on the different path I'm walking (Brie Wolfson captures this well)
Most shadows dissipate once you acknowledge them. Yes, future value is at risk, but I'm not financially insecure right now. One of the tenets in my sabbatical doc was to "avoid the impulse to play struggling artist". I have the privilege of not having to deal with that just yet
I do miss the confidence I had when starting the sabbatical. The courage required to do something like that when the industry is changing. I knew I wanted something different. But this flailing is part of the process.
I make all my decisions on intuition. But then, I must know why I made that decision. I throw a spear into the darkness. That is intuition. Then I must send an army into the darkness to find the spear. That is intellect. — Ingmar Bergman
Spear's been thrown
Walked the Pattullo Bridge connecting New Westminster and Surrey with my friend, three days before it closed for good (no one would ever walk it). Air smelled like touristy energy, sentimental value, salt and rust.
Willingdon Heights is my next almost-complete neighbourhood in Gogomi (~90%), so I picked it for my next hangout. Was a random Wednesday evening about town, most were indoors, a third of houses pitch dark, and many fun oddities around.
More walks in Mt. Pleasant with one friend, and a surprise walk with Amal (the author of one of the articles I recommended in last month's post!). I'd reached out and he happened to be visiting Vancouver, we met up and walked around looking for Inniskillin Vidal Icewine
The human body is made of 40% water. I took these pictures at 20%! Tried hot yoga with Em, got pizza afterwards.
All of that movement helped me fill my Jules gauge.
Jules is a social fitness app I built. Every day your quest is to raise 100° J and fill the heat gauge with your movements (steps, workouts, etc.). We crossed 50 people this month! Funny how it all started with my heater breaking three months ago (spent the entire winter without central heating). More on that in a future post!
One of my side quests is to tap at every TransLink station, so I built a Compass Wrapped spinoff: an animated SVG showing every station you've visited. The idea came from the post-game world map in Absolum, a hand-drawn beat 'em up I've been playing[2]
Romance-wise, the month of love started turbulently. Keeping it pushing. On Valentine's, I tag-teamed with a friend to babysit for separate friends. Parents rarely get alone-time so this was good. Celebrated my birthday at a friend's in my COVID graduation gown (a tradition so it doesn't gather dust), and went to that Pedro Pascal dome thing with a friend who's leaving the country soon, it lasted 15 minutes, underwhelming.
Went to Vancouver Systems #3, to hear other engineers' talks. Guy next to me was building a Gameboy emulator in Zig, cute. Been meeting interesting people this month: a colleague started working at a company applying LLMs to logistics, another from Movement YVR with an interesting transit project, and others working on LLM-powered projects[3]. Oh, also, someone from a company using LLMs for accounting reached out with very tempting potential job opportunity.
Last day of the month: spent the morning in Burquitlam helping a friend move, then capped the night in Gastown at a joyful art exhibition about being diaspora and postponing attachment to where we live...
I'm still not certain what the end of the sabbatical looks like. New job? Starting something? Moving out of Vancouver? TBD on everything. But placelessness looked pretty joyful on those walls in Gastown, and the fog felt a little less thick. The path is made by walking, fo-shur.