DON'T SWEAT THE TECHNIQUE
my first post about 2025, wherein i quickly detail my goals and my year-in-review... if you love footnotes, you won't want to miss this one!
Hi everyone,
Happy new year, again. Three days ago, I spent most of my time hanging out with a bunch of my ArtSci alumni friends and Luke. My least chronically online friend, David M1, had never heard of Substack before, so we (myself, David, Luke, and Sharang) spent a good chunk of our lunch discussing the nature of Substack and what folks use it for. We ascertained that the vast majority of people we know who use Substack post on it in two different ways: either as if they were writing an opinion piece on a personal column of some newspaper, or as if they were using it to echo the glory days2 of blogging.
You can guess where this blog falls in this arbitrary spectrum just based off the domain name alone. The majority of my closest friends have migrated to different parts of the world. This is by design, of course. I am plotting complete global domination, and to do so I must leave vestiges of myself in every nook and cranny of the Earth. You will find me in every little pocket. Hold your ear up to a conch shell in a few decades, and you’ll discern my voice if you listen closely. No other reason that my friends would be out and about.3 Messenger pigeons are out of season nowadays, and snails are not very good at traveling transatlantic, so my preferred means of being able to catch up with my little gremlins outside of the occasional call or the hourly Instagram reel is to post excerpts of my life here - for my friends to see, for anybody who Googles me to gawk at, for any random stragglers to be a little confused by.
One of these days, I’ll write a piece that isn’t about me. Good news for people who hate good news: this is not one of those days.4 I have a few pieces on the agenda for today. The last time I wrote to you, I spoke about everything I’ll be bringing into, and everything I’ll be leaving out of 2026. I don’t think I ever spoke about my new years’ resolutions, so let me list them all out for you right quick so that you can hold me accountable by this time next year:
Take sleep very seriously. Bare minimum 7 hours every night. No more all nighters.
Be less busy. Have at least one hour of scheduled5 free time per day. Be much more intentional about the time I spend on things I ought to get done, and things I want to do.
A bit counterintuitive with the above note but: volunteer more!
Think a bit more, probably, before doing things.
Get better at writing. Sharpen the rhetoric. Spend less time translating, and more time precisely articulating exactly how I mean without having to double back and clarify.6
Continue to be curious about other people. Ask good questions. Continue to let people know that I care about them.
Do more friend intermeshing. Let my social webs intersect more often. Have more crossover episodes. I tend to attract good people, and good people deserve more good people.
Flex my musical talents and perform at least once this year.
Visit the tailor more often. Get to know him on a first name basis. Pay more attention to my clothing, the material it’s made of, the way garments move and rest upon my body. Look good and feel good. Show them legs off.
Be more comfortable with taking Ls. Get more used to putting effort into endeavours that don’t end up where I want them to end up. Fall on my face more often. Make a habit of dusting myself off and trying again, and again, and again. Be unyielding, persistent, relentless.7
On a similar note: get over myself.8
taken on my first day in the Philippines. had more food in the 10 days i was here than i think i’ve eaten in entire months. whatever higher power is out there, i pray that 2026 will treat me as good as the mangoes from my mother land. one of the best eats of my entire life. closest i’ll ever be to touching God.
Jeez Louise! I’m only part way through this post and I already have eight footnotes!9 I’ve become a big fan of appendices. While I was hanging out with my president10 I brought up something along the lines of the aesthetics of citations. In hindsight I don’t really know what I fully meant by it.11 Something about reverence for those who have come before, something about the lifeblood of hip-hop being synonymous with sampling and re-mixing, something about the ways in which different kinds of in-text citation/footnote styles dictate the ways in which a reader views a piece aesthetically or semantically. There is probably something on JSTOR about this exact thing. I’ll have to write about it here at some point. I gotta stop before I get ahead of myself. Citation aesthetics was not on the agenda today. Let’s do the actual last thing on the agenda for today: a somewhat comprehensive year-in-review.
I’ll list all the notable events that have happened to me point-by-point in chronological order:
Met a bunch of really cool new people in January that I’m still tight with to this day
Ate about six? seven?12 plates of spaghetti
Campaigned for the Hamilton Mountain NDP riding during the provincial election13
Spent Valentine’s Day watching In The Mood For Love at the Playhouse with Sharang14
Volunteered at Write Like with Laura and the prez, met Aabria Iyengar15
Taught a bunch of anatomy workshops to kids at a bunch of different libraries and classrooms throughout Hamilton
Got really into playing the piano
Watched the 2025 Oscars Ceremony (Wicked did not sweep) and the first half of The Brutalist (it was alright)
Spent an obscene amount of time in the CFMU lobby
Became a regular at the Hub
Spent triple digits on flower bouquets
Hung out with my loved ones from Toronto16
Got really, really into cooking, for myself and for other people
Grew my hair out, and then cut it all off, and then grew it back
Became an admin for a very esteemed toilet-fixated account
Felt the collective grief of my people, and consequently became much more Filipino
Enrolled in the first cohort of a really hyper-intense, experimental, condensed version of CityLAB in May17
Art-crawled with SDP every month, with Sharang at least once, saw literally everybody in Hamilton that I knew. I looked really cool saying hi to somebody every few minutes
Visited Vancouver! Hung out with lovely Maia and a few other folks18, got to see the ocean with my own eyes for the first time in decades
My Father passed
Saw Tyler, the Creator live in concert in Toronto19
Spent the last month of summer spending as much time as possible with my best friends before they all left
Started two independent studies in my undergrad, one of which is still ongoing20
Became a TA while still doing barista stuff and school full time21
Volunteered a bunch at e^2
Spent a few sweet months with someone special to me up until the leaves changed
Visited the Motherland
Presented at the STAO Celebrates conference, alongside my friends at the MCYU
Finished up and presented my research on free-writing and democratic education
Turned 24, had a big birthday bash with most of my dawgs
Spent new years with even more of my friends
Celebrated my first NYE without my dad
It must be so fun to mean a lot to me. I get a kick out of every time one of my close friends mention my name in their little blog posts. Go see if you can spot yourself in the list or in the footnotes. I hope you can feel that same little hit of dopamine. I love giving out as much flowers as possible. If you’ve been reading thus far: I really appreciate you too. I don’t think it’s too parasocial to say that, considering if you care enough to read this you care enough about me. Statistically, maybe if you carry the one, I probably care about you in turn. So many cool things have happened to me. Thank you to all my friends, old and new, for making all that happen. I am the opposite of a self-made man.
It is dawning on me now, that the whole ‘getting over myself’ resolution probably won’t happen any time soon. It’s a work in progress. I started writing this post in hopes of eventually writing out my trip to the Philippines in detail for you, but I got so much footage on my trip that I think I might end up making a cheeky little video to document it instead.22 Oh, sorry, two more things to add to the resolution list:
Make more than one vlog this year
Get into grad school23
The one thing I regret most, in hindsight, and especially after losing so many people I once held dear this past year, is my lack of documenting people and events properly. I have awful memory. I’d like for these fragments of my life to be traceable, beyond the scope of own my personal diary that I’ve been keeping. Something my loved ones can look back on, whether its my friends or my folks or maybe somebody who will come after me. That’s all to say that I’d like to write to you more often. Perhaps not again this month, for I have many graduate school applications to lose sleep over and dozens more niche academic journals to pore over.
I think I’ve written enough for this one. The downside of writing these articles, besides how corny24 I feel while writing them, is how unilateral the resulting communication is. You be well and prosper, okay? Keep in touch while you’re out there, and keep my two cents in your pocket. If you ever come across a fountain in a park, toss a coin in. I’ll be there.
which specific david m i am referring to is something i will leave for you to figure out
i’m talking 2008 myspace, 2010-2019 tumblr, 2016 vsco, 2020s finstas, the few months that be real was a thing… there’s probably better analogies but i was not online in those circles as much as i was in others. real ones will remember the website that used my full legal name - this is the closest i ever was to having a tumblr account. funnily enough i modelled that page after frank ocean’s tumblr account. the more i write the more i realize how unoriginal i am
this is a joke, they’re doing very cool things. all my shooters speak whatever they speak in the UK
laura & danielle pointed out my sudden usage of double negatives. don’t got no clue what they’re talking about to be honest. you think i think before i write? be real
lol
of course, this is all for the sake of keeping my mouth closed more often. i yap too much
at first glance my entire vocabulary is filled with seemingly empty platitudes. my secret real new years resolution is to live in such a way where these platitudes are filled to the brim, have some ground to stand on. i like to think that i’ve done an okay enough job at that thus far
this is a resolution that i stole from SVP because i liked it so much. i stand atop the shoulders of giants
nine now bozo
by this, i mean the president of SASS from 2022-2023. i think it would be really funny if i just never outright spell out his name for no reason in particular, so moving forward i’ll allude to his presence in mysterious ways
note to self: never say something around two linguists without fully knowing exactly what you mean
stop
i don’t even live in this riding, just thought it would be more efficient to help out an area that was in need of more people
one of my favourite films of all time, and the first time he has ever watched it. i look at this day very fondly
i’m happy to report she was very pleasant and humble
shoutout to aseja and the housemates, to wasian luke, to imaan… nothing but love for these guys. makes the trek out to the city worth it every time whenever i see them
everybody i met through this is incredible and awesome, shout out avery and randy
danielle & hope, briefly
shoutout JJ for hooking me up with floor tickets, and for the noodles
i don’t think my supervisors will ever read these posts but if you do for whatever reason: your belief, faith, guidance, support and confidence in me means more to me than you will ever know. thank you for everything. i would not be here if it weren’t your efforts.
YEOWCH!
partly because i do want to make a video and flex my creative muscles, but also partly because i’ll get a bit too emotional if i start writing about seeing my grandma for the first time in decades… just know that it was awesome sauce
you’ll hear about this one soon enough
get over yourself dawg
that chopped ass pochita <3333
Also, can confirm that it is in fact so fun to mean a lot to you. Can still see the flowers you gave me