Location

Back in Vancouver for the foreseeable.

We finished our road trip across Canada. West coast to east coast… and back again. I think it was around 30,000km in total. We didn’t get to see any of the 3 territories since we mostly hugged the border, but saw 9/10 provinces only skipping Newfoundland. I was getting tired of driving by that point, but no doubt we’ll go back, just maybe in a hire car next time.

It was an experience of a lifetime for sure, and I feel very lucky and privileged to have been able to do it. I was able to work here and there from the road which made things a lot easier and gave us more flexibility of where we went.

We had no idea how diverse the Canadian landscape is, from the rugged coastline of British Columbia to the vast prairies of Saskatchewan, and the rolling hills of Ontario. It was a truly remarkable journey I will cherish forever.

We decided to head back to Vancouver because despite seeing all of Canada, it just felt like the best place to be. We got another 2 years on our visas. We’re not sure if we’ll use it all up, but another year at least is the current plan.

Photography, video, and crows

I haven’t been shooting as much since we got back. I think 5 months of living out of the car makes you go a bit insane and you need a break from it. Instead I’ve been pulling out the video camera and spending some time with the local crows down at the beach. Getting to know their behaviour and mannerisms has been fun. Kind of embarrassing having 20 crows follow you up and down the beach because they see you as the peanut dispensery, but it brings me a lot of joy.

Work

Still freelancing and enjoying it. Not much more to say on that subject for now. Love being able to work when I want. Most of the team I work with are in Europe so there’s little timezone overlap anyway, so I do a lot async and it works well for me. I can spend the morning at the beach with a coffee and breakfast, and then head back to get into deep work for the day.

Projects

I’ve been distracted a lot lately. Refrakt is still ticking along, but I really need to sort out some of the infrastructure costs. It’s no longer covering it’s own expenses and I get it. I’m not actively working on it, or spending a lot of time there, so it’s kind of quiet and people are using other platforms instead. I wish I still had the same energy for it as I did in the beginning.

I started working on an alternative called akkeri. It was built on atproto, the same thing that powers bluesky. Great for decentralization and data ownership, something I wish Refrakt was built on now. However the further I got with it, the less I was sure about about building anything for social. I think my ideals are leaning back towards people having their own sites and old school webrings instead. I just get sucked into the social side and it’s not really in my nature to be “always on”. Something running a platform requires, so it’s tough for me to still get excited about it, and it’s sat in my projects folder untouched for a few months now.

Despite that, I’ve been messing around with making games and just doing fun little side projects instead. Back to learning mode. Currently I’m messing around with a deck building roguelike/rpg crossover. No idea if it’ll go anywhere or if it will suffer the fate of my other projects. Time will tell, but it’s fun for now which is all that matters I think.

What’s next

No strong sense of what’s coming up really. Waiting for the day AI takes over all our jobs and we’re back to making art and having fun again, although not sure that will be the actual outcome but I can dream.

I’m still going to be working, maybe getting back into the flow of photography again.

I think my main goal is to just go with the flow a bit more. Follow my interests and see where they lead me. Trying to care less about being the one to make the perfect online space for creatives, and more about making things for myself and sharing if it’s genuinely useful.