I’m fucking done with this cancer and cancer adjacent shit.

It’s Wednesday night. I made a batch of chili this afternoon, and my parents swung by with goodies from their Costco run. We’ve got chocolate milk in the house again.

I finally put a dent in the heap of laundry that was waiting for me in the workshop today. Now I’m sitting here debating pre-ordering a glittery orange cassette. The problem is, there are four limited-release deluxe CDs I want to order, too.

In case it wasn’t clear, I’m not not a Swiftie.

I still remember the summer before I turned sixteen, like it was last week. The thing about turning sixteen is nobody really tells you how quickly time will fly by. Suddenly you’re turning 20, 30, and on the brink of 40.

They never tell you, until you’re older and you’ve already figured it out yourself, that even though time feels like it’s flying by, it’s moving at the same pace it always has. Everyone else around you is aging too. That means those friends you met at that one job, or the other one, will one day no longer be there.

You’ll blink and be in your late 30s, and they’ll be lying on their deathbed, or already gone, but not everyone knew, because the algorithm hides it from you.

I’ve been tinkering around with home labbing off and on for several years, but never really got into the thick of it, until recently.

Several years ago, a good friend (now gone) gifted us an Afinibot A3SU 3D printer along with a Raspberry Pi 3B. We set it up with OctoPrint and got a fair bit of use out of it for a while. Eventually, the printer needed some parts replaced, so it got shelved. And then life happened. I lost my cat. We moved. Twice. I had major surgery.

The Pi had been sitting idle through all of that, waiting for us to finally pick the project back up. With our previous place, I’d been thinking more seriously about expanding our smart home setup and doing something a bit more deliberate with my cobbled-together home lab.

I’ve had pieces of a smart home for the better part of the past decade or so (don’t at me, it’s not my fault I’m getting old and can’t remember when I bought my Hue starter kit, and I don’t feel like scrolling through my Insta history). As I’ve moved over the years, I’ve always made it a point to figure out a way to continue integrating my smart home with my home-home.

That paused when we moved into that stacked condo. The wiring was obnoxious, and the light fixtures required an overhaul to our bulb inventory. And then suddenly I was booked for my major surgery, and it became less of a priority.

It continued to stay in the back of my mind throughout my recovery, but shifting priorities all year meant it was something I’d focus on tomorrow, but tomorrow never happened.

Fast forward to Halloween, and I’m planning ideas with our neighbours for next year and how I can integrate smart home features. That had me excited again, and I was planning out decorating for Christmas when we’re hit with the news that we’re gonna have to move.

Not wasting any time (we’ve already been through the nightmare of taking a landlord to the LTB and didn’t want to deal with it all again, though we kept it in our back pocket just in case), we find a house. And so the smart home planning begins again. In earnest.

As part of upping the smart home game, I had been looking into some options over the last few years and kept coming back to Home Assistant (and other things, but this post isn’t about them). I had settled on this being the route we’d take with the house. Somehow. Eventually.

I kept going down the Home Assistant rabbit hole, and kept thinking about what hardware I’d run it on. I seriously contemplated getting a Home Assistant Green, even went so far as to budget for it, but eventually decided that spending money on an underpowered device I’d want to upgrade in six months felt pointless. Might as well invest in something else from the start.

I hadn’t settled on the hardware I wanted to use – I contemplated getting a mini PC, but couldn’t commit. The move came and went, and while I was away dog-sitting for my sister and brother-in-law, I was reminded of how horrible the thermostat at our new place was. I needed to get something smarter, but compatible with Home Assistant. I settled on an ecobee.

When I got back, Home Assistant wasn’t on my mind until an untimely power outage fried the existing thermostat. It was showtime for the ecobee.

Once it was installed, I kept thinking about how I needed to do more while we were still settling in and unpacking. The Pi! It was in front of me this entire time.

I hadn’t outright forgotten about it. I quite literally packed it up for the move. But it was always designated for (and labelled) “3D Printer stuff!” It had its purpose in our new home, even if its purpose was indefinitely on hold.

I figured I might as well use it for Home Assistant. Debated getting a separate SD card so I could preserve OctoPrint, but without knowing how soon we’d revisit the 3D printer project, I decided to not spend a penny more.

Once I made the decision, I didn’t waste any time. I grabbed it off the shelf and got it connected to the network.

It felt good, like I was finally putting something back to use that had been waiting quietly. And it wasn’t just about finally trying Home Assistant. This was the last thing Pete ever gave me.

It still worked.

It still mattered.

I have a complicated relationship with music. This is only the singer-songwriter and band side of the story.

Growing up there were no restrictions. I remember my parent’s music collection included The Beatles, Hootie and The Blowfish, Shania Twain, Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, The Rankins, and The BeeGees to name a handful. One of my first purchases that I can remember was The Spice Girls’ first album. But I also listened to the likes of Alanis Morissette and Ani DiFranco.

My younger to early teen years were spent listening to a variety of music, which you can confirm from that brief list above – and those are just some CDs I remember my parents owning by the time they had a really cool three-disc CD player in our living room.

I went and saw The Backstreet Boys in concert for their Into The Millennium Tour; I was a last-minute invite for a friend, but we had a blast, and I still have my lanyard. I was definitely very into the boy bands and the girl bands and the mixed bands of the 90s and early 00s. I remember listening to Boys to Men, New Kids on the Block, and Brandy when my older sister was still living at home. That was all mixed in with modern-day church music and old hymns.

A shift happened, though. At one point, once I had evolved into my Evangelical Christian era, I listened almost exclusively to Christian contemporary music – and I was obsessed. Jars of Clay was one of my all-time favourites. But I also enjoyed DC Talk, The Newsboys, Amy Grant, and Joy Williams.

The further down the rabbit hole I got, the more involved in worship band, the more I dug in. Hillsong United (and Hillsong) were very strong contenders, too. By the time I was starting my journey of deconstructing my faith, David Crowder Band was one of the last bands I listened to regularly. I had gone from listening to Y105 (eventually Y101) and KoolFM (with some Chez101, Magic100, The Bear & XFM features thrown in for good measure – shout out to Ottawa’s radio scene in the 90s and early 00s!) to exclusively listening to CHRI.

It was a CCM-or-nothing life for a long while, with the rare exception being whatever music we were playing in concert band. I made it a point to listen to as much good, wholesome music as I could and challenged myself to not swear, since that’s not who I was anymore.

Life has a way of sneaking in new sounds, even when you think your musical world is set. For me, it started with the people I was spending my time with.

My first serious boyfriend was very much into Drum and Bass, Happy Hardcore, and similar genres, and was an aspiring DJ, so I listened to a lot of mixed music. I fell in love. I was still very early in my deconstruction, but I was loving what I was listening to, for the most part.

Another boyfriend was a big fan of trance music. He shared artists he thought I’d enjoy, and I fell in love again. We ended up going to my first big trance show when Mat Zo and Above & Beyond came to town. I was absolutely enchanted by the trio of Jono, Tony, and Paavo and what they were doing. It really helped that we were literally in the second row from the front, often shifting spots with the couple in front of us, so we got to hold onto the railings throughout the night, too.

Oh, the rabbit holes I went down between the two worlds of music I had been introduced to! I honestly couldn’t get enough. Between that and going back to the world of secular music, my heart began healing. In more ways than one, of course – I was free to lose myself in the music and not worry about what I was listening to and whether that was going to fuck with me.

These days, my partner of seven years has some of the most wide-ranging music tastes I’ve ever encountered. There are still musicians who I’m discovering through our shared enjoyment of music. I also still march to the beat of my own drum, though. If you were to check my Spotify, I’m sure the top plays are from P!nk, Taylor Swift, some movie and TV show soundtracks, Disney stuff, and Bhangra. Though currently, I’m listening to John Muirhead at this very moment.

Music means a lot of many things to me. The soundtrack of my life so far has been an interesting mix, and lately I’ll have something on repeat as I can easily lose myself in the music and stim happily and freely.

Even now, the relationship is still complicated – and I think that’s exactly how I like it.

When I’m pet-and-house sitting for friends or family, it’s difficult to carry on some of my at-home routines. This weekend, to make up for some of that, I’ve set up a smol, couch-based workspace – a little piece of my home lab, relocated. Somehow it makes this borrowed space feel a little bit like home.

It’s Day 8 of Blaugust 2025, and here I am sitting in my bestie’s basement at my makeshift couch desk.

I had planned to tee up a blog post by mid day, but instead found myself juggling the chaos of my work day and a personal to-do list before I left my house to come cat-sit for the weekend. I left behind Wally, the cat who will seek you out for snuggles or punish you for your micro transgressions, to stay with Grrr and Finn while their humans are out of town. I’ve yet to see Finn, who is likely conked out on a bed on the second floor. But I did get to see and give scritches to Grrr after I fed her a late dinner. I snapped a quick photo to send to my bestie and my partner, and got back a photo of Wally crying behind the French door into our house from the front hall. He’s happy half of his humans came back home, but there will be a penalty for me to serve once I return on Sunday – doubly so as I will smell like other cats.

Eight days in, and Blaugust feels like I’m settling into a sprint, even though I’m not a runner. It’s reminding me that if I want to, I can write again. Sometimes it’s easy to gather the thoughts in my head and present them to the world in something resembling coherence. Other times, it feels like I’m back at the kitchen table in my parent’s house in grade 7, stuck on homework because I can’t figure out how to take what’s in my head and put it down on paper – or, in this case, on the screen. I think the little tricks and cheat codes I’ll keep up my sleeve are the same ones that have me posting whatever’s on my mind to social media. I’ve been managing that fine quite consistently for the past twenty years; there’s not much of an excuse to not stick around with blogging longer-term this time around. I guess we’ll see where this goes!

I cancelled my physiotherapy appointment. Again. For the second time in two months.

This time, all bets are off. I have no choice but to take better care of myself.

There’s an exercise bike sitting in our workshop.
I need to use it.
I need to do my physio exercises.
I need to go walking.

I keep putting it off.

After I finish eating.
After I do the laundry.
Tomorrow.

And then it catches up with me.
I should’ve done it earlier.
Now I’ve missed the window.
Oh well. I guess I’ll start tomorrow.

I went to check the mail today on my lunch break. It’s across the complex. But I went out and did it.

And I liked it.
I almost always like it.

But I get stuck inside my own head – push back against the motivation until it slips away.
And then I feel horrible.
Because I didn’t go.
Because my body is embarrassing to me.

I’d like to get a walking pad so I can do it at home, when I’m too stubborn or too anxious to go out walking in public by myself.

I need to move the bike out of the workshop.
That would make it easier.
More visible. Less avoidable.
Less… out of sight, out of mind.

Happy first day. You made it.

You’ve left behind yet another toxic workplace. One that pushed you into an all new level of burnout. But you’re ready for meaning and purpose and a new challenge.

You’re facing today with a glimmer of hope, and the unwavering encouragement from someone who knows this new role is exactly where you’re meant to be.

Look. You’re terrified. Burned out. Still carrying the weight of micro and mismanagement. But you’re ready. You’ve got this.

There will be long days. Overwhelming ones. You’ll sit at your desk in the early months of onboarding wondering what the fuck you’ve gotten yourself into. You’ll find yourself staring down a full book of clients whose monthly reports could’ve been done earlier, but weren’t. You’ll bring your dinner back to your keyboard because there’s no time to stop. You’ll tell yourself you’ll do it differently next month. You won’t. Not yet, anyway.

You’ll feel like an imposter. For months. Heck the better part of the year. But you’ll also start to notice that the way you fake it looks an awful lot like someone who actually knows what the fuck they’re doing. Because you do.

You’re the kind of person people rely on. Your clients, of course, but pretty soon your peers understand that you’re there for them, too. You show up. You participate. You offer support without making it a production. You hold space without needing credit. And people notice.

Oh yeah – you’ll end up co-leading the employee resource group that focuses on gender, equality and inclusivity. Past you would panic at the thought, after initially thinking that it would be cool to have some sort of meaningful involvement. Not just why me, but how the fuck do I pull it off.

But you will. You’ll hold space for hard conversations. You’ll help shape something that matters. And you’ll cap off your first year by slipping into the global lead role.

You won’t always know what you bring to the table. But your clients will. Your colleagues will. They’ll see the way you break things down. The way you encourage others. The way you participate even when you’re tired. They’ll feel the care in how you work, and they’ll respond to it.

So if you’re reading this – if you’re one year ago me, logging into your first day of onboarding and wondering if you just made another mistake – here’s what I want you to know:

You’re not alone. You do know what you’re doing. And it’s okay to take it one task, one meeting, one breath at a time.

You’re going to surprise yourself.

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A dumb, tiny thing we love doing together: laundry.

I’m picky about folding, so I’ll do it myself, but I enjoy his company while I do it. I ask him to help me with laundry. I’ll even ask him to do the laundry. But he knows that while I’m not one hundred percent a perfectionist, my brain has its moments, and the itch of folding laundry the right way — my way — is soothing. So he lets me.

It’s not because he’s lazy or doesn’t want to do it. It’s because he loves me.

This is quite literally what’s happening right now. We just got home from the butcher with some rib steaks for our anniversary dinner. We’re going to have hamburgers for lunch, and while I was getting that stuff out, he said, “I’ll go start the laundry.”

And I paused.
Hesitated.

He asked me, “What?”
And I said, “How about you do this and I’ll go start the laundry.”

He’s cooking (and somewhat burning, lmao) the frozen burgers on the stove, but I’m dressing the buns. I came back upstairs. He got the condiments out for me.

He knew.