Belated Thanks

I meant to get this post out between Canadian and US Thankgivings, and then after US Thanksgiving, and I just never found the time.

It is always worth considering what one is thankful for, particularly in these extremely stressful times.

I am not particularly thankful for the TTC, which has only provided really good service on 2 occasions over the past 20 times I've ridden it, with really dreadful service on a couple of days.  I am definitely not thankful for Ford and certainly not for Trump.  I am thankful that Carney does seem to be governing like a centrist technocrat, though I disagree with his pivot away from climate change initiatives and trying to appease Alberta (which I feel is foolish in the extreme).

I am glad that my health is overall quite good and on the rare occasions I do get sick, I recover very quickly.  I only had actual COVID symptoms for a day or so, and they didn't knock me out.  Indeed, given how well I managed COVID, it's fairly likely that I did have it once or twice before but was asymptomatic.  (Unfortunately, my son seems to have a much more compromised immune system and has caught COVID at least 5 or 6 times, usually needing several days to recover.)  I would like to lose more weight of course, but in general things are decent health-wise, and while I certainly have lost that spring in my step (and walking through museums for hours on end is harder for me now), I still get out and stay very active.

I'm glad we added the kittens to the household.  I think it actually does make me a somewhat more patient person and a marginally calmer one.  I'm also glad that cat litter has improved drastically from the really acidic smell from the 1980s and 1990s, though this clumping cat litter does have a tendency to clog the toilet a bit, and I am not thankful for that!

I'm grateful to be employed,* even though I am not in love with my work.  It has always been the case that the best, most rewarding work has been in places that I really didn't want to live, setting up a challenging dynamic.  I do overall enjoy Toronto, particularly its cultural scene, and I take full advantage of that.  However, I am not very happy with the way the generally incompetent and often venal politicians running Ontario make my work harder (or certainly less fulfilling) and they also have had some direct negative impacts on my personal life as well, though I won't go into that at the moment, aside from noting that Toronto really would be better off with charter city powers to insulate it from the terrible policies constantly emanating from Queens Park (with ripping out bike lanes and now forbidding speed cameras being only the latest outrage du jour).

But to put a more positive spin on work, they generally do let me pull together material to submit to conferences (even if I can't put all of this time down as chargeable on my timesheet).  I was not able to go to conferences at Metrolinx after Ford took over and wanted to show there would be no government employees enjoying themselves at public expense...  Anyway, I have managed to go to a few conferences, and I think in a couple of cases, I will actually be able to translate the work into a publication for greater reach.  (This is something I sort of stopped doing after my dreams of becoming an academic died, but I have a list of topics that I think would (still) make good papers, and this seems like a more useful thing to work on in 2026 than many of my other late-night activities, even though I do keep the doomscrolling to a minimum!)  

I also probably don't focus enough on that I am thankful I got out of the US in time.  I had pretty much wanted to leave since 'W' was re-elected, and we did end up in the UK for a time but didn't like it very much (and it has been truly terribly under the Conservatives and now it seems inevitable that the even more dreadful Reform will take over, so that was definitely a good move in leaving that sinking ship...).  I was pretty fortunate in making the move before the immigration policies tightened up (and I simply got too old).  I don't agree with pulling up the ladder after me, though I don't think there is currently a party (I could vote for) that is endorsing unlimited immigration (or only a few limits).  I am grateful in a small way that they did loosen immigration for foreign-trained doctors, so my family doctor will probably get to stay after all.  

Given that immigration is back in the public imagination (as an "issue") maybe this would be a good time to finish up that thing I was writing about my own imagined journey had I actually tried to do an endrun around 1990s immigration policy by marrying a lesbian.  (This was something one of my friends had proposed, though I don't think she was particularly serious about it.)  I have written it up as a play, but I think it would likely work better as a novel.  I'll have another close look at it, but only after I have made more progress on my other creative writing, which is going reasonably well, which indeed is another thing I am thankful for.

I might have to think a bit more if I was going to add any more things for which I am thankful.  It is one of the downsides of my personality that I don't generally see the positive side of things and often can't even point out the positives without also focusing on negatives, which undermines the goal of a post like this.  

* While my work is mostly pattern recognition at heart, there is still enough interpretation that clients don't believe machine learning and/or AI can do it all without some senior people (like me) to interpret the results for them.  This may last another 5 years before the price of this sort of work is driven completely down to the point where I will be out of work.  I guess we shall see.  I am definitely glad that I am towards the end of my career (12-15 years left I suppose) and not a bright young thing, as it is the juniors that will be impacted the most by the AI revolution, not only in not getting very good training but not even being hired to show off their skills in the first place...