2026-01-07 05:15:35
Ahoy there!
So, for a while I've started to become more detached and avoidant of labels. Not in the emotionally-unavailable-what-are-we-question-to-your-crush kind of way. I mean self identification and needing to reduce oneself to a series of labels.
I have a friend who is trans and explained that she's Demisexual, or as she rephrased shortly thereafter "bisexual with extra steps". She later started to lament about how a lot of people in queer spaces have this sort of obsession with "identifying" as something in an attempt to try to fit in, when it often does the exact opposite.
I think sometimes to that video my friend Suliman posted of a tiktok of someone who is gender non-conforming, giving a laundry list of their neopronouns as well as other identities such as "temporarily able-bodied and cat parent in mental health recovery". We got a good chuckle out of it, but I think it brings to light the almost absurd lengths we go to put labels on ourselves.
I sympathize with wanting to find common ground with people, if you're someone with ADHD it makes sense you'd want to find other people who are ADHD. But when you start trying to package yourself into these hyper-niche boxes just to be "not like them", it gets a bit weird more often than not.
I find we are better off being overly elaborate in our language. For example, if you ask me about my sexual orientation, I'll probably just shorthand it to "straight". In reality, if you asked me to specify my type, I'd say vast majority women, but femboys are on the table too. You might think "that actually makes you Bi" or "that actually makes you heteroflexible". I don't care, it's largely irrelevant, I'm happily married to a cis woman and never been romantically involved with someone of the same gender or sex-at-birth. It becomes pointless to a certain extent and a waste of energy.
Look if you wanna call me something else, that's fine, but I'm not gonna waste the energy trying to exactly determine what category I can get stuffed into. I'm certainly not going to be emphatic about any of it either. I'm not gonna argue with you over it to defend a certain identity.
I feel like labels once they get too specific end up leading to more fracturing.
For example, retro gamer can help you find other people who play older games. But if you "identify" as a "Semi-Nintendo 3rd Generation Retro Gamer" I'm gonna look at you like you just grew a 5th head.
Another example, left-wing spaces particularly online, you get the anarchists arguing with the Marxist-Leninist arguing with the Maoists arguing with the Democratic Socialists. At a certain point, you just gotta say "fuck the label, lets overthrow the ruling class and figure out the petty politics afterwards".
We begin to focus less on where we align and pushing forward because we are too busy arguing theory and semantics.
Which speaking of semantics, that's what it seems a lot of labels are. Just nitpicking semantics. At a certain point you gotta ask yourself what difference does it make? What difference does it make if I'm a "girl dad" or a "boy dad", I'm just a fucking dad. If you find you can ONLY relate to people with the exact label as you, that is a problem of YOU and your inability to talk past superficialities. If your entire personality can neatly fit in a post-it note, that makes you less interesting of a person in my book.
Religious sects are like this too. At some point all Christian sects are just some variation of Protestant.
To a point, all a label does is detract from getting to know the person. Part of me wonders if all this fixation on labels comes from social media. You only got X number of characters to put in your bio, better make 'em count.
It's kinda the same irk I have with calling blue a "boy's color" or pink a "girl's color". It just feels like nonsense to win some kind of purity Olympics and enforcing in-group/out-groups within in-groups/out-groups.
It can also have the impact that people don't understand the label to begin with and thus you have to further clarify anyway. An anti-Zionist to one person is going to look different to another depending on what definitions each person is working under. One might just think you are an antisemite because of the context of how anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism do become intertwined the other might think you are just anti-Israeli government.
You're honestly just better off explaining the verbose and letting the other person define whatever that means in their head.
Idk, I'm just spitting my brain at this point. Feel free to yell at me or say I'm missing/oversimplifying.
Pirate is wearing all-black converse, black pants, "Tummy Hurt" shirt from Cool Shirtz, red flannel
Pirate is feeling tired
Pirate is listening to Subliminal Verses Vol. 3 (Album) by Slipknot
Pirate is playing Bioshock on the Xbox 360
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2026-01-06 21:47:00
I overheard a discussion during breakfast. Actually, a monologue would be a better way to describe it. It just went on and on.
It started with “I’m not judging anyone, but...”.
Then he went on non-stop about how terrible people were. His boss was a psychopath, the ex-wife was a narcissist, his friend was a liar, and so on.
Sometimes it feels like being unhappy makes people happy, in a false kind of way. Like they derive their sense of identity from being “the unlucky one”. As if “bad things always happen to me” is their personality, or at least a big part of it.
They manage to find faults in every person and problems in every situation. They have to, to stay alive. No problem, no persona.
On the other hand, maybe this person really was one unlucky dude. Who am I to judge.
2026-01-06 16:00:00
The more I read blogs, the more I feel my thoughts are similar to others.
As I click on the links in the discovery page and on other webrings, people write about their lack of focus, hardships and feeling alone. Society has always been the same but now it is in our face 24/7 due to social media.
I don't want to write another doom and gloom post because there are plenty out there. We need to focus on the positive and remember there are people out there going through worse than ourselves. The world has much good to offer but it rarely makes the news if you know what I mean.
Writing blog posts and journalling help us get through the thoughts and feelings. We are all on this small planet doing our best at the end of the day. This is our journey of life, good or bad, these are the chapters of our book. Remember, chapters end and new ones begin. Any day can be a fresh start and don't wait for New Years to experience it.
2026-01-06 13:40:00
So obviously the big thing is that I live in Canada now.
Not permanently, not yet - that's a problem 2026 Nat will have to deal with - but stepping out of a 2024 that left me stressed and heartbroken and unbelievably tired, I cannot really oversell the degree to which this was possibly The Best Decision I've Made In Years.
Moving 7,000km doesn't instantly fix all your problems. There isn't some magic quality to the air in BC that cures depression. I still have off days (or weeks, or months), I've still had to deal with the frictions of trying to adjust to a new life and immerse myself in a new community. I still don't really know how to be single, and haven't yet completely figured out what the fuck I'm doing with healthcare. But in giving my life the hard reset that comes with dropping into a new city on another continent, I've been forced to confront the ways in which my life in Scotland had become stagnant.
Even before Rachel and I split, I'd been a very insular, very comfortable person. I didn't put work into socializing because her friends could be my friends. I worked remotely (from a home office or a Leith studio in the middle of the night), and sort of coasted through weekly dev socials. When I travelled, for work or for AMaze, I became an entirely different person who made plans and held long friendships, but that Nat never came home with me. A week before heading to GDC last year, a friend chewed me out for being kind of a shit friend who never made time for people. What broke me was realising she was right.
I have a lot of regrets about the person I was in my 20s. I could have had the community I have now, if I'd maybe tried a little harder. But friend groups collapsed, relationships ended, and Edinburgh is a small town where people and places are quick to gain the weight of history.
Vancouver has a reputation for being a place where it's hard to make friends, but I've never felt more welcomed in a new town. So much of this is through Lena and Aura putting their entire asses into making me feel at home; whether in our weekly bad movie decisions, going to parties with their friends, or taking road trips to the island. I am overwhelmingly lucky to be able to call them my friends. But it's also in seeing the regulars at F1 every other week and going karting; in bumping into Daffodil unicycling down main and hitting the skatepark; or realising Nicole's studio is mere blocks from my apartment, and that being as good an excuse for a coffee as any.
It's in bonding with strangers in a standby line for the Film Festival, and a skate scene that can throw its own movie nights or host migrant justice print workshops. It's being able to skate at all, honestly. To hell with cobbled streets.
There have been slumps this year too, of course. The game I was working on with Bithell sank on landing, with near enough the entire studio losing their jobs - and while I'd wrapped my contract before shipping, I spent basically an entire summer burning through savings in a way that prevented me from going places or doing things. I still go through moments where I feel out of place, and there are weeks or months where the lack of affection or intimacy in my life feels crushing.
But a strong constant this year was realising that that I have people I can talk to when things feel overwhelming. And when they aren't, I have an incredible energy to do things again. Working on this little Marathon-like with Aura is the most excited I've felt about a creative project in years, and I hope next year to find the time to push through some of the walls that put it on hold.
I don't really know that I have goals for 2026. I'd like to keep being employed, I guess, which is an unbelievably scary thing to think about in the current State Of Things. I'd like to find more reasons to get out of the city, see the mountains, see other parts of BC and Canada writ large, but that's all dependent on that first wish. I'd like to figure out what the next five years look like. I'd like the world to stop being on fire, for Palestine to be free, for my home country to reverse its disgusting slide into trans oppression, for my extremely talented friends to find stable jobs.
Last year I set myself with the simple goal of becoming someone who doesn't define herself through absences. At that, I think, I'm succeeding.
2026-01-06 11:36:00
Fuck your atomic habits
Your dopaminergic nootropics
Your four hour workweek
Fuck your bujo
Your calibrated microdose
Your Wim Hof human potential
And fuck your GTD
Your perfectly chubby FIRE
Your lifechanging magic of tidying up
Fuck your crucial conversations
Your calculated lean in
Your impressively deep fucking work
Come as you were
Bothered, unmoisturized
Taking up all the lanes
Inbox infinity, unstyled
Fried, half asleep
No transformative frameworks
No plan
Nowhere special
But hey, you’re here now
2026-01-06 08:56:00
Those who have been following along may know that I started this blog as a way to escape social media and bring back an old form of online connections through blogs and RSS. In my opinion it has been super successful and I've thoroughly enjoyed meeting so many wonderful people. My list of feeds continue to grow as I follow more and more people, so never stop reaching out if you want to say hi!
Bear Blog has been such a refreshing platform to post on as well; no qualms with it whatsoever. Herman is such a quality human being and I'll continue to push people towards this platform if they want to start blogging.
The only reason I'll probably stop posting here is my deep desire to return to building out my personal site. There's a lot of reasons as to why, and I think this post says it better than I ever could. The practice of having a side blog in addition to my main blog has worked out well, but in the end I would rather put more work and effort into just one site.
To that effect, I've actually built out something that lets me continue to push out updates that people can view or subscribe to through my now page, so if you want to keep seeing more content that you saw here, go subscribe and keep in touch! I made a little post with the details. I'll leave all of my previous content here and running, just won't be posting new stuff.
Thank you Herman for Bear Blog
Thank you everyone who has followed this blog
Thank you to everyone who has sent an email
Whatever you do, keep writing blogs, keep using RSS, and keep the web open 🫡