January 31, 2025I feel like I’ve been trying to focus a bit this past year. When I come home to a quiet house (four days a week) there are many things I could do. Watch shows, read books, cook interesting meals, go out and spend money being around people. But when I have all those options the tendency I have is to just kind of waste it. To work on that I’ve got three main things I’m working on filling my time with: bikes, books, and chess.
January 13, 2024I’m J Jack Unrau. I used to write on the internet some. I haven’t for several years. But the muscles should still work. I think.
The plan here is to fill in some gaps. I don’t believe I’ll be getting as library-ish as the old librarianaut blog ever was. There’ll be more about bikes than there ever used to be. I don’t think I’ll be writing too much about my kid, but we’ll see.
January 1, 2019Images which idealize (like most fashion and animal photography) are no less aggressive than work which makes a virtue of plainness (like class pictures, still lifes of the bleaker sort, and mug shots). There is an aggression implicit in every use of the camera.
On Photography - Susan Sontag
I take pictures of my kid every day almost. He’s young; this kind of behaviour is expected. I do it now because when he ages into being able to give consent he might not want me to. Will he see this as aggression? I do my best to not be controlling in how I steal pictures from people (inanimate objects are different, but not landscapes I realize), but will he resist my aggression, gentle as I try to make it?
August 24, 2018The smoke from wildfires has been darkening our skies in Edmonton, and I realized when biking between the flames of the Suncor refineries that the grim brown greyness, the miasma of grit, this is what it feels like to live in Edmonton compared to Nanaimo. It isn’t always so externalized but even on the days when the sky is clear this is a foul place to be exiled.
I’m reading The Silmarillion these days and I didn’t realize how much I didn’t know about Tolkien’s elves. I’m hurt by and see my own follies in Feanor’s foolish oaths that lead to exile and ruin. That it’s told in high-spoken language makes it feel more significant than my bullshit.
October 28, 2016In followup to the last post, yes, I did enjoy Nanaimo more than Campbell River. But now it’s time to be moving again. My partner and I are headed to Edmonton to start new jobs on November 7th. It’s a return to the prairies for me and I think I’ll like it better than I did when last I lived in Winnipeg.
I’ve spent most of my 30s out on the west coast and I do like the mildness of the winters here. But maybe it’s okay to live somewhere a little harder to deal with. A little (lot) colder, but with better food (non-sushi division). The new job should be much better than working for my former employer.
August 31, 2014Tomorrow I finish my month-long move down to Nanaimo for my new job. By this time next week though, I’ll be on vacation.
I hope I like Nanaimo better than Campbell River. I feel kind of bad for not liking it here. There are some very nice people in this town, but nothing ever really clicked for me. I will miss the folks from Coho Books.
In Nanaimo there are comic and game shops I’ll be able to bike to. The ferry to Vancouver is way closer and easier. I know a bunch of people there already (yes, most of them are librarians) so maybe I won’t have to live on the internet quite so much.