2026-01-03

ThingChal26

For more info on this thing challenge, see a site that has yet to be created.

More specifically, the rules I'm loosely enforcing for myself are:

• Make something every week (ish),
• Have them relate to the theme (in whatever contrived way),
• Play with structure + medium. Goal of one new medium a month?
• Interact with others through swaps, inspiration, or physically making together.

You can find other's posts for the challenge in the shared directory.

Personal Directory

Month 1: Last Month, Crackle, and Fog

2026-01-01

Feeling weird about visiting 'home'

Everyone is noticeably older. It's been five and a half years since I moved out. I had a brief moment of living here, again, during my post-op recovery, but that was in the old house, and only a couple years after I moved to Montréal. That felt like a truer send-off to 'home' than leaving for university did, carrying the weight of a farewell to the place I had spent my first 20 years as my family moved house. 'Home' is now my family, as the few friends I had from secondary have moved away as well. But I love my family. I care for them deeply, and each visit leaves me wishing I could be around them more. I feel inane to want to move even further away.

2026-01-06

Want

I want to grow old. I want to raise a kid, maybe two. I want to play music. I want to sing with reckless abandon. I want to shave my head again. I want to learn how to machine. I want to bike across the USA. I want to lay my head on your shoulder and cry. I want to make and serve a meal so good I will never forget it. I want to be unabashedly good at it all. I want to knit a fine wool sweater. I want the fog to lift and my memory to appear, etched into the sandstone cliffs of my mind.

2026-01-26

Sleeping in places

I really ought to have been taking pictures of all of them. For maximal silliness.

1. My own bed <3
   Duration of sleep: 5 hours
   Rating: 9/10
   Notes: Oh so comfy, oh so cozy. Didn't sleep for quite long enough, but it was restful.


2. On the flight to Vancouver
   Duration of sleep: ~3 hours
   Rating: 2/10
   Notes: Couldn't fall asleep easily and found it hard to stay asleep. The kind of sleep the actively makes you feel less rested. Regrettable.


3. Sitting on top of my luggage on the 99 bus in Vancouver
   Duration of sleep: ~10 minutes
   Rating: 4/10
   Notes: Of all the power public transit naps, not a bad one. A quick nodding off leaning against the window on the bus is a tale as old as time.


4. On the floor of Snow's apartment, wrapped in a blanket
   Duration of sleep: 30 minutes
   Rating: 6/10
   Notes: A solid nap. Was planning on going for a full hour and a half but woke up after half an hour feeling pretty refreshed. Not the best nap ever, but definitely not the worst.


5. On the flight to Fiji
   Duration of sleep: ~8 hours
   Rating: 8/10
   Notes: I've had so many worse plane sleeps. I fell asleep easily and stayed asleep pretty well. I think the jet lag will come to bite me on this one, though.


6. On the flight to Melbourne
   Duration of sleep: 2 hours
   Rating: 3/10
   Notes: Okay. This is the definition of airplane sleep. A screaming child to my right, and lady invading my space to my left. Alas, I nodded off, if only to escape this existence.


7. Katie's bed !
   Duration of sleep: 7 hours
   Rating: 9/10
   Notes: Yay! Arrival! I survived the jet lag and slept at a normal hour after an evening walk with my friends. The sleep was pretty good, too, in a comfortable bed and fully horizontal.

Month 2: Choir, Constellation, Second

2026-02-15

Travel Opinions

I fancy myself someone who travels relatively frequently, has peculiar expectations and desires for her voyages, and has a few opinions about the concept of travelling. Here they are, presented in an unstructured format.

IATA needs to standardize the size of the overhead carry-on bins on flights. At maximum, there should be three possible bin sizes, ideally two: a small size, for smaller aircraft (think able to fit on a De Havilland Dash 8 or CRJ-700) that would work on smaller single-aisle regional flights. If they want to get really cool with it, they can make it work with metric paper sizing—that the relation between the smaller bins and larger bins have their dimensions defined by a shared ratio so that more small bags could fit within a the larger bin. Also, a checked bag should be an obligatory free service available to every customer. If you want to get restrictive with it, put harsh limits on carry-on baggage while offering a free checked bag. You'll get fewer carry-on kerfuffles, faster boarding and deplaning, and quicker security. If you, the airline, are already paying for baggage services, you might as well use them.

That said, I am still coming around to the concept of "checking a bag". I've had some of the worst luck with getting checked bags lost among most people I know, though I would say I fly an above average number of times within that sample (and it's Air Canada who keeps losing them too, usually on tight transfers (because they've run very delayed), though they have genuinely lost my luggage without cause a couple times). A series of lost baggage led me to get one of the Cotopaxis that have been so generously promoted sported by Jet Lag: the Game. It's been magical travelling with a large backpack-bag as my primary luggage for the better part of three years now. On flights with carry-on baggage weight and size limits, the eyes of gate agents skim over it because it's hauled on my back. When my bag is properly full, I can lug a solid 20kg (44lb) of gear for about 3–4 weeks of travel (if I have access to laundry during my trip). Unlike a little roller bag, this thing fits perfectly in every overhead bin I've ever stuffed it in, even when it's full to bursting. Even the noble Bombardier CRJ-700, vanguard of Midwestern mainline air travel, is no match to the squishy colourful pack. I know my glazing has sold a few of my friends on the Cotopaxi. Sucks! I love it.

Compared to some of my compatriots, I do really well at battling jet lag. I think this is due to a few things that can be summarized as "sleep hygiene", but I'll spell it out for you. 1: Change your clocks to your destination as soon as you board your flight. Once you walk through that jet bridge it's a portal to your destination, congrats! Start acting like you've already arrived. Regardless of how the flight's service goes, when they dim the lights or serve the food, hold yourself to what would be typical for your destination: sleep when it's normal to sleep there and try to stay awake during their daytime. 2: When you decide to sleep, give yourself all the amenities you can. I'm talking eye-mask, I'm talking earplugs (not foam, personally), I'm talking adjusting the little flaps beside your head to give you better support when sleeping in the seat. If you have a hard time sleeping on flights or in cars, try some stuff out before a huge trip and see what works. I can sleep basically anywhere, but this is what helps me stay asleep in hostile (red-eye) conditions. 3: When you arrive, hold yourself to not sleeping until it's normal for your new time zone. You will want to nap so bad, I know, but you cannot let it win. Go walk around outside or find an activity to occupy you until you can sleep normally. Alternatively, try to sleep if it's dark, even if you know you have zero chance of falling asleep. Close your eyes and try to rest, pointedly, for at least two hours. Maybe get a drink before doing this, if that helps you.

I believe you should travel for a motivation beyond getting the postcard shot. Travel is more than seeing the socially defined highlights of a place, the hop-on bus experience, it's getting to be around different people who have decided to live their lives slightly differently to you. Get recommendations on where to eat from strangers at the library; ask after their favourite cheap lunch. Trek through the beautiful parks and throw yourself far afield and walk through somewhere alienating and unwelcoming. This is not to eschew the touristic favourites; the local food that's minorly instagram famous has a reputation for a reason. But you are the one giving meaning to the world around you by what you choose to visit, see, taste, and feel. Reclaim your agency.

2026-02-20

Rogue-like

This world is big and terrifying. This is what you were made to do: to forge forward, stealthily manoeuvring under couches and shelves to press through the gap at the back of the laundry room and lay your trap. The dryer vent warmth comforts you, for a while. Your prey enters, steps heavy with impetuous abandon. They pause, just before your snare, and you draw your breath quietly. As they turn, you strike, a quick and maiming blow, as the beast remains upright.

Month 3: Sedge, Breath, Melting

2026-03-07

Shame

I can feel the shame drip off of me. It's syrup-thick, cloyingly perfumed, and smothers me. I sit as still as I can in the metro, phone dead, alone with it. It starts and stops, daring me to move to its ripples. They can smell it on me. It runs down to the floor, congealing into one sticky mass with the reality around me. The shame won't stop flowing. It's coming from my tear ducts into my mask and under my headphones and through my hair and down my back and into my ears and it's covering my hands and they're stuck and it's still flowing out of me covering my eyes my nose my mouth my body until i am submerged in it

2026-03-10

playing body

I've been toying with self expression lately. The body is a canvas, as the adage goes, and I am a toddler who's brought the crayons to bear on the drywall. I'm trying out lipstick—a colour my mom would probably describe as "slut red"—though she wouldn't do so as her modern self. It's nice, it's weird, it's unusual. I've only used black lipstick before now, and then only rarely, which was far enough from the norm that it served as a further rejection of it (2018 emo alice had the spirit). This red lipstick looks typically feminine when I do it right—accentuating the other reds in my outfit—and terribly inept in any other situation. I also really want to try leaving lipstick marks on someone's cheek. The concept sounds nice.

I think the lipstick looks nice, for what it's worth.

I cut my hair again. I borrowed the clippers, held them to my head, and in a brief moment of clarity decided I didn't want to go all the way again (at least right now). In some ways I'm more scared of going full buzz now than I was three years ago. Job hunting lurks like the reaper ahead of me, influencing any potential changes I could make to my corporeal self. There's nothing I want to do less, but alas. The circumstances demand it, the least I can do is give it a true attempt, not one damped by anxiety and guilt. My new haircut is cute and self-done, another log on the fire of self-accomplishment and pride that is stoked in the trials of my profession. I don't know if anyone would've noticed it if I hadn't told them, but I'm proud nonetheless. The news from Missouri and Kansas and Nationally terrifies me. For a trans kid, I've had to think about gender awful little. I followed the blessed path, danced the necessary judicial steps, and had supportive parents, so it was always just a fact of life. It's an extraordinarily privileged position to hold for now to be the first chance I have of having so much of this ripped away from me. Losing my American drivers license would be annoying, but I have a backup right now. Passport would be worse, and birth certificate is already fucked, so.

If you're in these places and experiencing this, I want to send you my uncritical and unbound love. If you ever need anything: two hundred bucks, a place to crash, someone to cover a phone bill, let me know. We'll figure it out together.

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