I'm happy in my Toronto life. The 'good' in my life is nominal; people see this predicament, but they don't understand that none of the bad parts of my life exist anymore. This tiny apartment and subsistence life is the palace I built for myself from the breath in my lungs.
My succession of victories is long overdue. In 2023, I pharmaceutically resolved chronic suicidal ideation; in 2024, I got my own apartment in an important city; in 2025, I wrote a book.
There's not a lot of human interaction in my life currently, you can blame capitalism for that. The book I wrote is not the product of comfort and resources. When I promised myself to have a draft by 38 in 2022, I shut out some very fundamental parts of my personhood, parts that used to be the loudest. I gave up on friends, civic engagement, and art. I knew nothing I did before I got this draft would matter. I was right.
The most impressive thing I did in the last 3 years was giving up the EI job hunt and bearing down on the manuscript. When my U of T mailroom contract ended, I spent 3 months trying to be an effective job searcher. I got interviewed then ghosted for a second year in a row applying to separate trades programs for underrepresented job seekers. I had 5 months left of EI when that happened. From August-December writing was my full-time job. I hobbled the 2.5 years of piecemeal scrawl into 22 chapters of paradigm-shattering prose. It’s hella rough, but it’s real.
The book is titled Lesser Gods, and it’s going to change my life in 2026. The book rises from central themes of philosophy of science, neurodivergence, and speculative geopolitics. It’s not about me, but it is about what I know and how I know it. I can only tell you how I know things with biographical elements. Lesser Gods is my testament, a futurist addendum to the Bible.
I get to be my whole self when this book gets published. I get to be the sum of the previous versions instead of a never-ending retrofit. I realized a lot about myself writing full-time. I've got 2 chips on my shoulder, two pimples full of grief that will never pop. The first is for the childhood that I was robbed of. My foremost childhood impressions were surviving domestic violence and hating my body. The second chip is for my undergraduate experience.
The memories, or perhaps lack thereof, that pain me are from how I had to stumble through university drinking culture without any clue I was autistic. Shame is not why it hurts; the grief I have is for my lost time, money, and health. I’d gladly take a refund for the sunk costs of investing in intellectual bankruptcy.
When I look back at my undergraduate education, it doesn’t feel nostalgic; it feels like ret-conned inauthenticity, but It wasn’t inauthentic. The value I placed on being impressive on paper and likeable irl structured my personality. I exhausted myself with constant vigilance. (Constant vigilance!) I was not meaningfully engaged in my undergraduate education, but I had decent grades, sparking extracurriculars, and a beefy friend network. I met a lot of amazing people during chunks of my life that I don't hold favourably. It was for the most part glorious, but I was such a different person that the memories don’t feel like my own. Reflecting on my first degree feels like something I love being subsumed by something I hate.
This dynamic combined with early-on-set millennial has-been-ism (‘omg I feel so old’) frayed my connections on Instagram, so I left. 4 years later, the prodigal Instagrammer returns. I must get my digital affairs ordered for publication, so I’m also going to migrate this blog to substack before the year’s end.
Publication in 2026 is my goal, but it is not my priority, unfortunately. My current priority is securing income in the immediate future. My EI ends with the year, so I’m seeking subsistence employment while I’m editing and navigating publishing. I would greatly appreciate help achieving that goal as well as getting my name in ink 🙂
See You on the Other Side & Happy Holidays
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| Light snow in late Fall, East York |
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