Things Left Unsaid

before dawn

October 8, 2026

Every morning since we got here I've been up hours before sunrise. That's why I have been posting more these days. I'm not sure if I'm justifying the increase in posts, or if I'm apologizing. Just stating a fact I guess.

I don't mind being up so early. Just noting the slight complication of doing things in the dark. I don't have that issue at home. The city is never dark. Of course I could turn on lights. I always prefer to turn on one dim lamp in the corner. I'm the same at home whenever I can be. Just enough light to see what I'm doing. All the ceiling fixtures here are those cold white LED bulbs that I can't stand. I find them really harsh and unnecessary. Like lingering too long after last call in a bar, and they turn the lights on to make you leave. I don't even know if they still do that like they did 30 years ago... the last time I was in a bar after last call. Rambling. Whatever. The lights are too much right after waking.

I notice tinnitus a lot more, and more often when I'm here. Now that I'm typing about it I'm remembering the things about it that I know. Normally I don't give it much thought really. I know that the right side is higher pitched than the left. The intensity of it can be somewhat minimized with proper diet, sufficient rest, and lower caffeine intake. By minimized I mean that it is slightly less if I consistently maintain those things, and is more if I do not. It is always there though. Whether more intense or less is completely irrelevant. It's always fucking irritating. I've had it since my 20's. Between then and now I have looked online occasionally to see if smart people have figured out any new things. After wading through the pit of clickbait last time; I found that they have determined it stops during sleep. I don't remember how they determined that. Don't remember? Don't care? If it was any use to me I would have remembered more details. It was an interesting read, but at the same time I found it annoying. I want to know how to turn it off, not about how it actually does turn off every night when I go to sleep.

I haven't looked online for things about it lately. I feel it is safe to assume that it is probably now like most things online... in that A.I. has likely sucked up all the information it can find about tinnitus, and is now puking up worthless slop about it in vast quantities. I suppose its creators would tell me that A.I. is likely going to find the cure. It can do everything! lol ffs I don't believe them. I won't believe it unless tinnitus is actually gone from my own defective head. But (hypothetically) if so, I say, who fucking cares if it finds the cure tomorrow, or if it already has? If the thing does figure out the cure to tinnitus, the worthless fucking scumbags in charge of it will make sure that the vast majority of the population can't afford it. They would only reveal the cure if it makes them richer. They can all go fuck themselves.

Now I'm sitting here thinking about A.I. and the possibility of it finding a cure to tinnitus. It won't. I would love to be proved wrong about it. But further thought on the useless subject is that if I had to choose between having tinnitus for the rest of my life and forests being bulldozed, communities having all their water drained, the sky being heated, etc. all for data centers; of course I would 100% choose to keep the tinnitus.

A.I. could have been used for good things if it was done right by the right people. The ones in charge of it are stupid awful people with too much unregulated power and too much wealth. So it is just shit, like everything the put their grimy hands on.

It is nearly noon now. Looking stormy, and is starting to rain for the first time since we arrived.

silhouette

October 7, 2026

Being here in this amazing place makes me think that I have been ready to retire since I started kindergarten. I say that only sort of jokingly. Life happens though. There was no choice in the beginning. If I had not been through all the shit from the beginning to now I would have nothing to compare this to. Maybe I would not be able to fully appreciate times like this vacation.

Sitting here typing this. Having a coffee. It is so still, silent, and dark here. That is not something I ever experience at home in the city. I prefer being here surrounded by trees, silence, and wildlife, over the usual of home. Surrounded by constant noise, concrete, and too many people. Anxiety, stress, crime, bad drivers, violence, and desperation. Add to that my fucking soul destroying job. lol, oh come on. It's not THAT bad. No? I guess most of the time, like Detective Somerset said, I embrace apathy as though it were virtue.

Within a 50km radius in all directions from where I sit right now there is likely not even fifty thousand people. At home within the same distance it would be millions. I feel more alone at home than I do here. blah bluh blah bluh blah whahhh

Been through, I typed earlier. Been through. As though I went into, and then came out the other side. I'm still in all of it. Or is it all in me? Did I go through it, or did it go through me? What is it? My life. Life passed through me and left remnants of itself in me. Like that gunk that builds up inside of a kitchen sink drain. Sometimes I look back to the beginning from now, and all the in between, and it feels like there is a story to tell. The then to now. Like I could scrape the gunk off, and turn it into a book. Other times I feel like I could tell the entire thing, and it might fill one piece of paper, one side, or at most, not even enough to jam the shredder.

The sky is just starting to brighten here. I took a break from the screen, and stood outside for a minute. It is zero C. Not a breeze. A faraway train horn. The lake is like glass, fog hovering above it. Stillness. Silence. Everything is becoming a silhouette except for one lighted window across the lake. That is happening right outside the window beside me. Soon the colours will begin to emerge. Already the outline of another cottage across the lake is appearing. It happens so fast.

Having a second cup of coffee. Soon the sun will touch the tops of the trees. Looking at the weather report it looks like this will be our last sunny day here. I'm not complaining though. It is wonderful here even in the rain. A month from now there could be snow on the ground. Just a few weeks ago it would have been all green, hot and humid, with swarms of biting bugs. This is the perfect time to be here.

only water

October 4, 2026

I've worked quite hard to achieve my mediocre running abilities... that have now given me a 2nd place in a category in an event. I still think it is pretty cool, and I feel quite good about it, even though I know that the only reason I got 2nd is that fast people in my category were not there.

The bulk of my running has been all alone on the city streets and paths near where I live. Alone, and aside from a weekend run, they are in the morning before work. For the last few years, since switching to morning shift, those runs before work have been alone and in the dark. That, combined with the social anxiety that permeates every fiber of my being; it takes a lot for me to show up to an event like the one I did yesterday. I should be including as events all the ParkRuns I have done over the years.

Sometimes I wonder why I register, and why I show up at these things. I guess showing up to an event or ParkRun pushes me outside of my comfort zone physically and mentally. And I guess that's good for me? I suppose. Not really a good answer as to why bother. I'm not competitive at all, and these events are a race. I say, hey, winning is for the elite runners. The best of the best. The rest of us don't compete with anyone but our past self. But even that now is kind of pointless with the age that I'm at. As I get older it gets harder. My 55 year old self can't do what my 49 year old self was doing when I first found running (or did it find me?). I work harder to achieve a slower time.

For the data maybe. That is a fun thing to think about. A tracker on my wrist communicating with satellites showing me distances and times is not like showing up at a start line with a chip pinned to my shirt front. I run across a mat on the road that communicates with the chip. This chip time is so much more accurate than the thing on my wrist. I get to be forever on a list of runners for any particular event. I was there, and did that. It is pretty real I guess. Proof that I'm actually running and not just pushing myself around the city streets on a scooter just to get kudos on Strava.

About five years ago I had some water left over in a water bottle after I ran a full marathon. I went to pour it into the sink, and suddenly stopped. I pictured that water sloshing around in the bottle while I suffered through that 42.2km run. Instead of dumping it out, I put it in a stainless steel thermos. Whenever I did a long run on a weekend, or participated in an event or ParkRun, I would put some of that marathon water in the water bottle I was taking on the run. I would save some, and then return it to the thermos after the run. I've been doing this for years with the water that is in that thermos. I have water in there from all the registered long distance events, and also most of the ParkRuns I've done, for years. That includes a few I did out of town, and also Claremorris ParkRun in Ireland. I filter it twice. and boil it for a few minutes occasionally, and then sterilize the inside of the thermos before putting it back in. lol Just a weird ritual. I know it is only water.

event day

October 4, 2026

The race went quite well today even though I did not sleep very well on our first night here. It is not uncommon for me to lose sleep from the excitement of a running event the following morning. Plus it takes me a few nights to get used to sleeping in a different place. I've always been like that.

Previous years I was running the longer distances that started early in the morning, with gun time being right around the moment the sun came above the horizon. The 5k started at 9:30am. We got to do the 45min drive to the start line right at the very beginning of sunrise. The drive was so amazing. Misty lakes, fall colours. Pastel sky and clouds. It was almost overwhelming, but in a good way. It is such a beautiful place to be. I felt like I could stop every ten seconds to take a picture. Then just before we arrived, right after the sun rose above the horizon; I realized that those picturesque moments last only a few minutes, maybe ten or fifteen at the most. Only then if the conditions are right. Semi clear sky, and cool-ish temperature. We lucked out.

I was completely wrong about the amount of runners registered. It was only 300, not 1000 or more. Having never run the distance before, I had no idea how many were registered. All I knew was that it was completely sold out. It is considerably fewer than the amount registered for longer distances. I had assumed that it would be the same for the shorter distances.

The race was hard. Running is always hard. I didn't 'take my foot off the gas' the entire run. I knew at just past half way that I would not be getting a personal best, and I did not. The crazy thing is though that my time of 27:59 placed me at 2nd out of 10 in the M50-59 category,

69th of 300 overall

37th of 93 males

2nd of 10 male 50-59

I'm quite pleased with this! I must say though, after I finished, I felt quite disappointed about not getting my PB. I finished, and then as always went right to the car and left. Went out for breakfast. I checked the results on my phone while we were waiting for our food. If we hadn't left I would have been called to the podium. But I was not there. That was sort of disappointing, but being on the awards section of the results pages makes up for it. I have a little trophy beside my name. Pretty decent certificate to print out. All kinda cool. I guess I'm doing all right for 55.

autumn

October 2, 2026

… is always a time of nostalgia for me. I was feeling it yesterday while meandering through paths and back streets between here and PetSmart. The trees are turning. A slight chill in the breeze. Daylight slightly dimmed. It was also a weekday morning so it was pretty quiet. Although I was on a back street in this city; I found myself thinking of the village of my childhood. Halloweens and thanksgiving dinners of the distant past. When we were all together, and young. And alive.

Then back to the now. I thought of all that has happened between autumn last year and now. Of course at the forefront is the death of my father. I don't know why exactly, but my mind goes back often to leaving the hospital on that frigid February morning.

The hospital doors whooshed open. The five of us passed through. Me and my two brothers, my sister in law, and my mother. It was snowing, no wind. Still hours from sunrise, just minutes after he had passed. All of us were freezing, sad, and exhausted.

Sudden scraping rumble of a snowplow in the dark somewhere out of sight but not far away. The shocking cold felt good after all those hours in the hot stuffy silent palliative care ward. Odd where the mind goes sometimes. This is the first time I've typed about that particular moment even though that moment is one I think of often.

Now I don't know what to do with this thought made into words. What else to type. His life had just ended, and then at that moment ours began to go on... I guess. As we do. Life goes on. So they say. We talked about getting together later in the day after some sleep, and about how to get out of the parking lot with the pay card one of the hospital staff had given my mother. So fucking normal. But not.

vacation

October 1, 2026

Day two of vacation. It is nice to be away from the pressure of the forty hour work week for awhile. I find that it takes a few days to really settle down. Went for a long walk yesterday to get cat food, and went out for lunch. Kind of an odd thing to do in the middle of the week. Went the long way. Felt no urgency.

Running prep 2026 officially concluded yesterday morning with one last stairmaster session. Now two full days of rest. Tomorrow we pack up a rental van, and travel north. Then Saturday I line up at the start line. The Run. The crowd. The results. After that, a week at a cottage on a tiny lake. Then home for Thanksgiving before back to work.

I have a tiny label printer. I print out QR codes of the address to this blog. Over the summer I stuck some of them on the leaves of trees. Some vanished within a day. Others, if they were in the sun, faded away and became a small white square stuck to a leaf. Some lasted for weeks. One of them, oddly the very first one, has lasted months. I wonder if anyone has ever scanned any of them and ended up reading this garbage that I post. It is now autumn. They will all be gone soon. Blowing away on the leaf when it dries up and falls. Maybe become part of a squirrel nest. Floating down the gutter. Or mulched.

3:00am

September 29, 2026

There exists an alternate version of this post with the profanity intact. I let it simmer for awhile, and then removed it all before posting. There was a lot.

These are the mornings I like the best. I can get up and sit here typing things for a little while before I have to start thinking about going to 'that place'.

Today might be my last day before vacation begins. I say might be. As they did with Canada Day; they are now doing with Truth and Reconciliation Day. They told us that they switched it from Wednesday to the following Monday. Months ago I had booked Thursday and Friday of this week, plus all of next week. It was all booked and approved. Plan was to start vacation on the stat holiday Wednesday. When they made the announcement to us about the day being switched, I made the mistake of going and talking to the boss about it.

I asked, “I have Monday booked, so does that mean I get to be off Wednesday?” His response, “I can't make you come in, but I would rather you were here. It is month end.” I was annoyed, but I can't say that I was surprised. That was a few weeks ago. His response kind of caught me off guard, and I was like, I suppose I could come in. The closer it got though, and now that the day is tomorrow; my mind has changed. This is my vacation start, booked and approved months ago. I never talked to the boss again about it. Nothing yes or no was officially confirmed.

I have an app on my phone that I use to request and confirm vacation requests. I have been checking it often to see if he has gone in to the system and altered my approved requests for the vacation day to better suit the needs of the company. If nothing has changed before tomorrow morning then I'm not going to show up.

I will take screen shots of the approved requests, and also screen shots of the time stamps on the screen shots. Then if he tries to be difficult about it I have something to show to HR. A modern version of 'having it in writing'. I shouldn't take it personally, but I do. Also though, he could have been like, oh yeah, no problem, enjoy the vacation. I guess he's just doing his job. Being an a-hole.

If he does change my request, then I will accept the mistake I made talking to him about it, and I will show up tomorrow.

When month end arrives they are always saying, all hands on deck. It drives me insane. How quickly and efficiently we get the orders out the door has very little to do with quantity of workers present. It is more about how the work is being done. The quality of our processes has been on a decline for years now. I feel sometimes that we could get twice as much done with half the people if things were being done right. That is quite an exaggeration, but really not exaggerated by much.

There are so many things contributing to the loss of quality in the workforce these days. In this company where I work a lot of it began with a high turnover beginning when covid began. We are constantly a workforce of new people. A lot of long term workers left back then, and never came back, even when this version of normal began when covid was shoved to the back burner, (or maybe it was shoved right off of the stove, still boiling?). I think we are also being impacted by the rise of fascism, and the decline of intelligence that is coinciding with the rise of A.I. use. The oligarchy that has always been unfair are choosing to tip things even more precariously in their favour with the fascists help. That is my opinion anyway. I feel that is all contributing in subtle ways to our decline as a company. Subtle in my day to day work days. Not so subtle in society at large.

Most of the problem though, also IMO, is that no one seems to be able to understand the physical work side of the processes. The physical work is being directed by a crew of people who have never done it themselves. All they see is numbers on screens, and there is just nothing in their brains that translates that to what is happening in the physical warehouse.

Coffee is done. And time to get ready. Hopefully starting tomorrow I won't have to think about this work crap again until after vacation.

https://write.as/thingsleftunsaid/right

event prep final

September 26, 2026

Less than a week to the 5k event. I'm in the very final days of prep. I could say that I'm in the second phase of it. I did all those interval runs, and stairmaster sessions, while wearing the weighted vest. Now I'm on to doing non-stop (no walking) runs without the vest. The plan for this all along was to do 7.77km runs. With plans like this I don't fully believe I will execute them until I'm in the midst of executing them.

Intentionally planned these final runs to be longer than the event. I have done two so far. They went quite well. All the vest work seems to have paid off. One more run to go on Monday morning, then stairmaster on Wednesday. Then that is it. Two rest days, and then the event day will finally be here. These last two sessions are really not very necessary. Nothing to be gained from them, nothing would be lost if I didn't do them, but they are important to me anyway.

I do all my running in the dark at around 3:00am here. Nothing but me, often rabbits and skunks, and sometimes drug addicts. Rabbits freeze, stare, and then bolt. Skunks get startled, puffed up, and stare at me. Drug addicts (so far) have ignored me.

In less than a week I'm showing up at a start line in the daylight with over a thousand other runners. I'm quite anxious about anything that involves other people, so naturally I'm anxious about this. It is probably good for me somehow even though there is a voice asking, why the fuck am I doing this?!? lol.

It feels good to feel this strong and fit. It also feels good knowing that after the event I will be off work until the 13th October. I find that the approaching event and vacation has pushed the news away from the forefront of my mind. It is likely healthy to allow all that to be on the backburner for awhile.

https://write.as/thingsleftunsaid/event-prep-2

mixed tape

September 25, 2026

Music has always been a big part of my life, and not something that was just playing in the background. It has been quite a ride over the years with how I acquire music to listen to. Radio, records, and 8-tracks. Cassettes, CD's, and then mp3's. Now streaming. A little while ago I decided to spend way too much money on audio equipment. The main goal of my purchases being good quality sound through headphones.

I'm not going to name my purchases just in case an audiophile ever reads my blog. I don't want to hear about what a mistake I made buying this, or that, and fifty other things that are ten times better. I will say that I have a small DAC, and two pairs of headphones. One pair never leaves the apartment, and the other is for commute walks. It is quite an upgrade from $25 Walmart headphones plugged directly into the jack on my phone or computer.

The last couple of weeks I have changed what I listen to on my way to, and home from work. Last week I posted a playlist, and I will include another at the bottom of this post. Both of them are the length of my commute walk, and I listened to nothing but those songs all week. Once on my way to work, and again on the way home.

It was an idea I had a couple weeks ago when I was doing the usual thing of selecting a playlist, hit play and random shuffle. Found myself often taking the phone out of my pocket and selecting enough songs to get me through to my destination. Then I also noticed I was choosing the same songs for days at a time. It reminded me of mixed tapes or CD's.

I started thinking back, and back some more, to before streaming, before mp3's. I would sometimes listen to the same CD for a week straight or more while driving in my car to and home from work. Now, with streaming, I could easily listen to music all week and never hear the same song twice if I wanted to do that. But I found myself wanting to hear certain songs.

That all brought me to this idea of listening to the same songs on my walks. I named the playlists Mixed Tape. It has been interesting getting to know these songs better like I used to do with songs when I would go out and buy a new tape or CD, or if I would make a mixed tape or CD. I don't know if I will keep doing this indefinitely, but for now I'm finding it quite enjoyable. I have heard these songs many times over the years... but doing this; I feel like I'm really listening to them. If that makes sense.

Thank U – Alanis Morissette

We Belong – Pat Benatar

BLACKEST – The Raveonettes

Strangers When We Meet – David Bowie

Jealousy Is Lethal – Pixel Grip

And All That Could Have Been – Nine Inch Nails

instagram

September 23, 2026

I haven't used Instagram in a long time. Kind of funny to note. When I typed that first sentence it said, I haven't looked at Instagram in a long time. I went back and changed it to used. It seemed more fitting, in the same sense as when a person says they haven't used heroin or cocaine in awhile. I kicked Instagram. Cold turkey.

It was part of my daily routine for a long time before I stopped. I would get home from work, and make something to eat. Then I would sit on the couch eating, and scrolling. One day I just randomly decided that I had enough of it. Wasn't even something I had planned to do that day. No build up or anything. I was just sitting there staring at my phone, and I thought, wtf am I doing?

No idea at all how long ago it was when I stopped. I guess there is likely a way to look that up in usage history data or something. I don't really care about it enough to bother. I don't miss it. It is interesting to think about how I could instantly live without it.

There were some okay things about it. A lot of good people post a lot of good content there. The biggest issue for me was the lack of control over what came up next. On top of the lack of control; it was very obviously being infiltrated by useless A.I. slop. That is likely worse now than it was when I stopped.

I was thinking about the words Artificial Intelligence. I found myself thinking of them on their own. Artificial. Intelligence. I had a weird thought that the thing we are calling Artificial Intelligence is not artificial or intelligent.

It is a bunch of massive computers, that are real. They have been fed things that their creators stole from us. Things that were created with our intelligence. It has all been converted into data. The things process that data with processors the size of warehouses, and their creators sell that as intelligence. And I guess we buy it.

They are like vampires draining things from humanity that we require for our existence. Where are they getting all the materials to build these things? Can those materials be used to make life better for humans in some way, and not for building massive computers? I don't know. Probably.

Draining water. Draining electricity. They say that they generate enough heat to warm the air around them. For miles around. Like we need that right now.

Do we need A.I.? Why?

It seems mostly so a tiny handful of rich a$$holes can be even richer than they already were, and so they can have more power, and more control.