The Making of Stuck EP

The Idea

For years, I’ve toyed with the idea of recording my own music. The spark of this thought came about roughly fifteen years ago when I bought, on a whim, a massive VHS video camera, one of the ones where you can put a full-size VHS tape in the side compartment, record what you want, then pop it straight into a VHS player connected to your TV. In fact, it was pretty outdated tech when I bought the camera, but I couldn’t afford anything else at the time and it was only a few bucks at the thrift store. Add that to the fact that smartphones were not a thing yet and it starts to make more sense.

Taking Apart Her Crib: The Instructions

The following is the true story of my daughter, Freya Rose. She passed away on January 21, 2016 and was born a day later.

Part 3: The Instructions

I find a pamphlet that was hiding under the changing station I had built for her. In it are the directions on how to take the two boxes of scrambled parts we were given by my mother-in-law and turn them into a crib. Everything is simple: pictures, not words. As I flip through it for the second time in the span of a few months, I remember how complicated it seemed to put together despite the man in the instructions showing me plainly what to do. 

Taking Apart Her Crib: The Mattress

The following is the true story of my daughter, Freya Rose. She passed away on January 21, 2016 and was born a day later.

Part 2: The Mattress

I wrap the mattress tighter than I do the wooden slats. I know that if I could just put enough pressure on the mattress, if I can squeeze it tight enough, it might just take up less room in our crawlspace. Maybe then I’ll have room for something other than this crib.

Taking Apart Her Crib: The Screws

The following is the true story of my daughter, Freya Rose. She passed away on January 21, 2016 and was born a day later.

Part 1: The Screws

The screws are hard to take out. I’ve assembled and disassembled a lot of furniture in my time but I’ve never encountered any screws that were this hard to take out. Were they this hard to get in when I put it together? I can’t remember now. 

Taking Apart Her Crib: An Introduction

I haven’t written anything for a while. In fact, it’s been over a year. It’s always been normal for me to take long breaks from this platform, whether that’s a few weeks or even a few months. This is the first time I’ve had a good reason.

Over the next little while, I’m going to be sharing the story of my daughter’s birth as well as her death. It isn’t an easy story to tell but I feel that, on some deeper level, its telling will be therapeutic for me. I’ve told my story to many people in my circle of family and friends but some of you, including you internet strangers, haven’t heard it before. Maybe that’s what I’m trying to accomplish in writing this all out: dealing with the death of a child is a strange and uncomfortable experience because no one talks about it. The death of a child is so unnerving to some that they would rather ignore it altogether than acknowledge the deep impact it has on a family. I hope that by sharing my story I can change that, even just a little.

This is the story of how I had to take my daughter’s crib apart before I ever got the chance to lay her down to sleep.

Vandana Shiva Part 1: Communities and Governments

I recently attended a talk by environmentalist Vandana Shiva, hosted by Public Interest Alberta in a packed hotel ballroom. She spoke–after glowing introductions–about things like GMOs (or genetically engineered organisms, if you will), economy, the term “progress”, and feminism. I won’t lie, she is a very good speaker: very friendly, easy to relate to, and most importantly, she appeals to the already existing values of the audience. How do I know what the audience thinks? First, in my city, for about 50% of the population you can tell who’s liberal and who’s conservative just by how they dress and how they react to events that tout “revolution” and “anti-establishment” as main topics. I do consider myself a liberal person, but, after looking into Shiva’s past claims, I find myself conflicted as to whether or not she was really taking a realistic approach.

Dungeons & Dragons: Improvised Storytelling

The talk I went to last weekend, the one with the two Bioware writers, talked about using Dungeons and Dragons as a pathway to understanding how writing for video games work. What they meant, as I understand it, is that writing adventures and acting as Dungeon Master in a game of D&D is very much akin to writing a plot and dialogue for a video game because you need to account for choices that player’s can make, choices that don’t necessarily follow a rigid structure.

Sylvia Feketekuty and Luke Kristjanson: Writing for Video Games part 2

And now, for the not-so-encouraging part two of my experience at the talk by Bioware writers Sylvia Feketekuty and Luke Kristjanson. I find myself procrastinating on writing this just because I don’t want to face the crushing reality that is how hard it actually is to get a job as a writer for a video game company, according to some of the things these two writers had to say.

Firstly, and maybe most importantly, there was a discussion as to whether or not positions as full-time writers actually existed in big studios (which is pretty much a dream job, in my opinion). The impression I got was that, no, there aren’t really a lot of companies that will just hire you off-the-bat as a writer. It’s much more likely that you’ll have to work in some other faculty and then be asked (or volunteer) to write for the game you’re already working on. Already this demands a set of skills that veer away from the ones I already have: I can write, I can imagine stories, I can build characters, but designing, programming, play testing: these aren’t really anything I would call myself “skilled” at. I won’t lie, my heart fell a bit when I heard them talk about that sort of required multi-tasking ability. However, there was a good deal of talk about being a freelance writer and being hired on contract to write for a game in progress.

Sylvia Feketekuty and Luke Kristjanson: Writing for Video Games part 1

makers of Baldur’s Gate, Dragon Age, and Mass Effect

This afternoon, I went to an event at my local library where Bioware writers Sylvia Feketekuty and Luke Kristjanson were asked questions about the video game industry and how they got to where they are now. Before I get into everything that was talked about, I’d just like to point out how awesome it is that this kind of thing exists. The Writer in Residence there set it all up because of the new interest in video games that the library’s interactive section was creating. What’s more, even though the email I got notifying me of the even said that only 30 participants would be allowed to come, the place was overflowing with at least 60+ people. And the library let them stay! People were lining the walls, standing in the back, sitting on cushions; it was great.

As for what the writers had to say, there’s a lot to unpack. The talk started pretty innocuously with the writers talking about what games they used to play, what their first gaming system was, even what games they were good at as children. As I’ve read a number of articles with people in the gaming industry, this was pretty standard fare and I didn’t take much stock in it.

Installing a Bathroom Sink: Why I Now Hate Water

So, one afternoon after a long day at work, I come home to find out that my dishwasher’s waste has been backing up into the bathroom sink. For context, my bathroom sink is on the opposite side of the wall as my dishwasher, so this isn’t beyond reason, but it’s still infuriating. I have a deal with my landlord: if I do fixes around the house, he knocks a significant amount off the rent. What this means is that it was up to me to solve this problem. Okay, man-hat on, chest puffed out, let’s do this.

Checklist: Never done this before? Check. Scared of breaking things even further while attempting to fix them? Check. Intimidated by learning complex tasks that throw your masculinity into question? Check. All set!