It’s a sunny fall day in Saskatoon. I walk down a shaded sidewalk lined with tall raspberry plants to the residence’s front door. Sunlight dapples the leaves, and the ripe fruit shines like rubies. Pam opens the door at my knock and greets me like an old friend. Her dog barks a friendly hello, and a black cat scoots outside with some exploring to do. I soon find myself sitting in her cozy home and studio, ready to chat about her art and business.

Pam Brace has always had a creative spirit. From an early age, she was creating art with pencils, brushes, and pastels—always busy with her hands and continually developing her artistic eye. She felt drawn to photography but didn’t get into it until adulthood. She loved the precision of the craft and the exhilaration of taking photos that others were excited about. “It was like a dopamine fix!” she says with excitement. When she upgraded from a point-and-shoot camera to a DSLR, there was no going back.

Pam owns and operates Roses & Scars Photography, a business she started in 2018 when a friend hired her for her first gig—a relative’s wedding. “It was scary at first—people think I’m good enough for this?” As word of her quality, speed, and enthusiasm spread, her confidence grew.

Thanks to her creative and adventurous spirit, Pam has experience with a range of photographic styles and subjects: from weddings, family photos and maternity/newborn shoots to sports photography for the Saskatoon Roller Derby League. Today, Roses and Scars Photography is a thriving business that focuses primarily on capturing graduations and boudoir. She recalls feeling an instant connection with these two styles: “Holy shit! I love this!”

The name of her business tells a story about her intent and approach to photography. To Pam, “Roses & Scars” means that both happy occasions and painful moments are beautiful and worthy subjects for art; they are a natural part of someone’s life story.

I ask a question I’m not quite sure how to frame. As a camera-shy person myself, I wonder whether it’s possible to work at all with people like me so that the right moment is captured. It turns out this is one of many “magical superpowers” that are just part of Pam’s nature: she puts people at ease because she is open to feedback and her excitement is infectious. I get excited just listening to the passion in her voice as she recalls past projects.

Pam is often inspired by her own creativity and her ability to learn and adapt. She came into craft of photography in adulthood and successfully navigated learning all kinds of skills, from F-stops to writing marketing copy. She says she stays inspired in a few different ways: making her business low-pressure and learning about new techniques.

Roses & Scars Photography stays low-pressure for Pam because it isn’t her only form of work: by day, Pam is a skilled respiratory therapist. Balancing the two occupations can be tricky, but to her it ultimately means greater freedom.

Pam keeps learning and growing by following photographers she admires on social media. She is particularly attracted to inventive work that makes creative use of light and color. Studi0 2:22 is a present favourite.

Pam supports her business with the following technologies:

• Website and blog (Wordpress)

• Social media (Facebook, Instagram)

• Content scheduling (Meta Business Suite)

• Invoicing (Google Docs)

• Long-term photo storage (physical hard-drives)

• Photo sharing (Google Drive, thumb drives)

Pam uses ChatGPT to help her with copy for blog posts and social media captions, as well as to help visualize artistic ideas.

She used to use Shootproof, an online tool that photographers can use to create branded photo galleries for each client, but found it ultimately limiting. It is difficult for clients to use and pricey.

Price and ease of use are important considerations when selecting technologies to support a business. Pam began by managing and evaluating every tool, including building her own website from scratch. She feels this learning curve is essential even if you end up contracting out the work to someone else eventually, as she did with her website. It’s absolutely vital for a business owner to know their tools.

Pam has the following advice for creatives:

”Continue growing and don’t give up!”

When starting out in business and selecting tools, Pam knows from experience that the process can be overwhelming. She recommends approaching the problems that come up with a simple mantra: pick a small piece, learn more about it, execute on the learning, and repeat.

Pam is also extraordinarily resilient in her personal life. She shares that she experienced mental and emotional hardship after the birth of her son a few years ago. She learned a lot about herself, coming away from that time with an ADHD diagnosis and greater understanding of and support for her needs. She laughs: her fun escape these days is indulging in phone games. The Ants: Underground Kingdom presently has her hooked.

Thank you so much, Pam, for sharing a bit about your business and creative journey with me! To learn more about Roses & Scars Photography, check out the website and follow the business on Facebook and Instagram.

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Pixel art is a digital art style characterized by low-resolution, blocky scenes reminiscent of impressionistic paintings. Digital artists originally created pixel art for video games in the ‘80s and ‘90s. The hardware limitations of console games at that time meant that video game files had to be small. Even though the same technical limitations no longer exist today, the style is nostalgic for many and has remained immensely popular.

As with many other artistic styles, pixel artists can generate income through a variety of sources: from private commissions and creating products from their art, to designing sprites and scenes for video games and creating art for online publications.

Last week, I met with Izzy Hubert Lyall to chat about art and business. Izzy creates dreamy pixelscapes through her online business izjustpixels, based in Edmonton, Alberta (Canada).

A lifelong gamer, Izzy has always enjoyed the vibe of retro games but didn’t (and still doesn’t) consider herself a very artistic person. Art class wasn’t very encouraging growing up and picking up a paintbrush was never her jam. After following pixel art social media accounts for years, she began making her own art in 2021, creating scenes from her imagination and from her life in Edmonton. She found pixel art to be very accessible in the beginning because of the welcoming community and the availability of online tutorials.

When she is working on her art, Izzy finds that she becomes so absorbed that she enters a flow state, where time and worry seem to melt away. She creates best in a quiet, cozy atmosphere: listening to lo-fi music with a mug of hot tea or coffee in the wintertime works best.

Izzy’s creative inspiration comes from a variety of places. She loves spending time on something enjoyable that sparks interest and appreciation in others. Her projects often use Edmonton landmarks as their subject, making them instantly recognizable to those in her local community. Izzy also enjoys following the development of other pixel artists online. Some have started only a few years ago and have gone on to design art for online publications and video games.

Creating pixel art requires the use of a few standard digital tools:

• Aseprite

• Pyxel Edit

In addition to these tools, Izzy supports her business using the following technologies:

• Custom domain (NameCheap)

• Website code (GitHub Pages)

• Print-on-demand products (Redbubble)

• Commission payment processing & digital art storefront (Ko-fi)

• Social media community (Mastodon, Pixelfed, DeviantArt)

Izzy chooses to be completely AI-free in art and in the business tools she uses. There are practical reasons for this: generative AI models haven’t yet mastered the unique constraints of this style of art. It isn’t yet possible for AI models to generate pixel art images that make sense. Izzy has ethical concerns as well. The AI models that exist today are trained on digital and digitized art without artists’ permission and without compensation or recognition. This makes using contemporary models to generate and sell art ethically questionable in her eyes. Finally, Izzy thinks the act of creating art is enjoyable! She draws on an analogy to weightlifting: we can design a robot to move heavy objects from point A to B, of course, but the goal of weightlifting is the change experienced by the process. She feels making art works the same way—the goal is the process, not necessarily the product.

The tools available to contemporary artists are constantly changing. For Izzy, the most difficult thing about art isn’t creating the art—the artist’s tools are learnable and quickly become muscle memory. The area that she struggles with the most is picking platforms to support her that won’t change out from under her.

For a while, Izzy was active on Twitter (now X) and Instagram but found both platforms changed significantly over time. The sense of community on Twitter dropped drastically with its rebranding to X in 2023; Instagram’s algorithm changes in 2016 and onwards disadvantaged many smaller creators and made it more difficult to spread content to non-followers. Even print-on-demand platforms like Redbubble change their pricing agreements with artists regularly. It is difficult to keep up with the changes and continuously evaluate whether the tools are benefiting creators.

While she recommends being diligent about picking social platforms that support good community and moderation, Izzy also acknowledges it is impossible to know what the future brings. Because the online world can be turbulent, she tries to engage with a real-life community of local artists as much as her online community.

For those interested in beginning pixel art, Izzy has the following advice:

“Just get started! Make it exist first; make it good later.”

For Izzy, the point of creating art is the joy it brings to herself and to others. Outside of pixel art, Izzy loves playing the ukulele with her local ukulele group. She finds making music with a welcoming community of other players to be a uniquely joyful experience.

Thank you, Izzy, for chatting with me and teaching me a bit about your art and business! Connect with Izzy through her account on Mastodon; check out her artwork on Pixelfed and DeviantArt.

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Sunshine filters in from a large window, illuminating the room with a soft, gentle light. The shelves lining the walls are filled with bottles and potted plants. A vintage tapestry hangs behind a large desk. I feel as though I’ve stepped back in time and through the door of a welcoming apothecary. Jennilee watches me from over the top of her computer screen and greets me warmly as I enter.

Jennilee Cardinal-Schultz owns and operates Green Tree Beauty in the heart of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (Canada), a business specializing in natural, sustainable, and cruelty-free skincare and cosmetics.

In 2016, Jennilee found that she could no longer tolerate the irritation from wearing mascara, so she began testing alternative, natural products. Through her research, she learned how harmful the synthetic compounds are in mainstream makeup. A makeup artist by trade, Jennilee couldn’t endorse products she wouldn’t use and switched the makeup in her kit over to natural products. She specialized in using natural products from then on, and Green Tree Beauty was born.

Jennilee’s business is thriving today. She has just hired and trained two additional makeup artists to help with special occasions, such as weddings and photoshoots. She also carries over 30 brands of mostly Canadian-made beauty and cosmetics products. My personal favourites include Corpa Flora from Quebec, Routine Natural Beauty from Alberta and Ash & Thorn Herbals from British Columbia.

Routine in particular has developed a strong following among Jennilee’s customers. This company specializes in natural and effective bath and body products with amazing scents (with scent-free, baking soda free, and vegan options too). Their holistic approach to product development extends to their packaging as well, where the company selects earth-friendly options—always.

To support her business, Jennilee invests in technologies that complement each other:

• Combined point-of-sale (POS), inventory, online store (Shopify)

• Email marketing platform (Omnisend)

• Customer wishlist tool (Wishlist)

• Marketing design tool (Canva)

• Content scheduling (Meta Business Suite)

Many of these tools integrate well (specifically Shopify, Omnisend, and Wishlist) which makes setup easy and customer-friendly.

Jennilee finds that her current social media content scheduler has integrations that don’t function well, which means she has to manually post content some of the time. Her productivity suffers as a consequence because she finds it much easier to batch and schedule posts for future release.

We have a long and deep conversation about the role that AI plays in business, in society. Whether it will be known in future history as a boon or a bust, AI tools are firmly embedded in many people’s workflows today. In her business, Jennilee writes original marketing copy and occasionally uses AI assistants (such as ChatGPT) to help organize her thoughts.

When asked about the advice she would give other creatives just starting on their business journeys, the answer comes immediately:

“Know your tools really well!”

Being in business doesn’t require that a business owner have advanced degrees in programming, design, or marketing, but a basic understanding of these skills will serve immeasurably. It may be that it makes sense to contract some of these jobs out to others with more experience. However, going through the initial learning curve of learning how to use the tools is a boost to leadership confidence and means owners are able to successfully execute all areas of the business in a pinch.

Jennilee is inspired by the many women entrepreneurs in her community. Blair Voth Miller is a partner in some of Saskatoon’s best known restaurants; Nikki Hunter is an entrepreneur at The Green Vanity in Kelowna, British Columbia (Canada); Melissa Squire is a self-taught, sustainable fashion designer in Saskatoon.

To start a business, as these women have, is to make a change in the world—building something new where there didn’t used to be anything. The business may or may not be unique, or even successful, but it does have the power to change the life trajectories of its owners, of its customers, of others it impacts.

Making change in the world doesn’t have to happen in large leaps. It usually happens gradually as small and incremental tweaks. Small changes over time amount to a big change; individual changes over a population add up. Jennilee offers shyly that she shares these beliefs, that hope for the future begins with one small decision to do things differently.

Jennilee’s favourite local haunt is a new place in Saskatoon: The Edit Boutique. Started in 2024, this business is dedicated to the principles of circular fashion and provides a highly curated vintage shopping experience.

Thank you so much, Jennilee, for chatting with me and teaching me a bit about your business! To follow along with Green Tree Beauty’s journey, catch Jennilee on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

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I drive through Davidson, Saskatchewan (Canada) on the highway, heading north to Saskatoon. Along the road, I spot something unusual: an old-fashioned black buggy parked in a field with large white letters painted along the side. Antiques! A parade of handmade signs soon appears one after the other, tugging at my curiosity. When I see the sign encouraging me to turn off the highway, I follow it. Home can wait an hour or two.

What I find is nothing short of magical: a cheerful and bustling place in the countryside that inspires you to stop a while, take your time, and wonder at times past.

Erin Kinder is the owner and operator of Kinder Surprises Antiques and has been in business for 11 years. What began as a small business occupying a single repurposed barn on the acreage has grown to encompass several out-buildings (including a church!) and three additional staff members. Today, the business is operating at its peak with great products and an amazing team. Over the years, Erin says she has become better at investing in pieces that her customers love, which has streamlined her business.

“Every year since we started has been our best year!” she says with pride.

Erin comes from a family of crafty and creative do-ers. Her parents ran a gas station in Davidson and her mum owned an antique shop years ago. They were willing to try anything and didn’t worry too much about failure, she recalls. In business, they inspire her to this day.

Kinder Surprises Antiques is presently supported by the following technologies:

• Combined point-of-sale (POS), inventory system, and website (Shopify)

• Sales via live video (Facebook Live)

• Rural internet access (Starlink)

Erin has encountered a few technical challenges with setting up her antiques business on an acreage. She has attempted to sell antiques using a Shopify-backed online store during the COVID-19 pandemic, but found the product ultimately limiting: it is designed more for selling t-shirts where you have 20 of the same design rather than one of a kind items. “It was a mess,” she says ruefully. Instead, she has found significant success with selling her items online on regular Facebook Live events. Reliable access to the internet in her rural community to power these systems is also a challenge, even though she has subscribed to Starlink.

I ask about the role of AI in her workflow, and Erin smiles: “It’s been a godsend!” She uses ChatGPT to help her research antiques and their histories. Without this technology, she would be restricted to rare books and niche websites, both difficult to find and time-consuming to parse.

When asked about advice for creatives looking to start their own businesses, she replies:

If you think [starting your own business] will be easier than a 9-5, it won’t be.

There are so many different skills required to successfully navigate a business today: product development, design, marketing, and technical know-how—just to name a few. The learning curve is steep and requires patience, practice, and flexibility.

Erin also recommends getting to know the resources available to help small business owners: often it is possible to apply for grants, and other support is available through organizations like WESK.

In addition to running her successful business, Erin can be found lifting heavy weights at BarnYard Fitness in Davidson. The fitness facility is run by locals Chiara Traversa and Tory Allan, and recently won the community’s 2024 Business of the Year award for their investment in the community and dedication to excellent service.

My chat with Erin draws to a close, and I spend some time browsing in the main barn alone. I am immediately drawn to the shelves of pink Mosser glass dinnerware, and my imagination takes flight.

Thank you, Erin, for spending some time with me and teaching me a bit about your business! To find out more about Kinder Surprises Antiques, check out the business on Facebook and Instagram.

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The table is decked with an orange check tablecloth. Large windows let in the sunny, fall morning. The dogs are snoozing fitfully at our feet and mugs of hot tea warm our hands. I’m sitting in my dining room with Sheila Maithel and we’re talking inspiration, transformation, and the Saskatoon food scene.

Sheila owns and operates Protagonist Design, an art and design business that she runs online as she travels between Atlanta, Georgia (USA) and Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (Canada). Through her projects at Protagonist Design, she aims to promote curiosity, kindness, perseverance, and playfulness. Her most recent project certainly inhabits the intersection of these themes.

Sheila is presently working on offering a jewelry line inspired by kintsugi—the Japanese tradition of repairing broken pottery with lacquer and gold. The thought behind this practice is that brokenness can be made whole rather than discarded; the cracks can be celebrated as a natural history of the piece instead of hidden. Sheila applies this philosophy to her own human experience, choosing to believe that times of profound heartbreak in her life deserve to be transformed. She believes that the moments that crack us open might actually make us stronger, not weaker. Through this project, Sheila lovingly makes visible the cracks in our lives, and “honor[s] life’s battle scars and character-building moments.”

The inspiration behind Protagonist Design began in 2013, when toy startups started to produce gender-neutral toys and action figures. Inspired to develop toys that were motivational and educational, Sheila decided to try designing her own action figures of heroes from world culture. Her first figure was of Durga, a warrior goddess in Hindu mythology. With 10 independently moving arms, this is one of the most sophisticated figures in the world. Engineering it was an opportunity to hone her 3D modelling skills.

Just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Sheila was in India visiting family and studying different art forms. She took an interest in temple jewelry—miniature representations of the figural sculptures found in Hindu temples. This led to an enduring interest in jewelry-making. She had developed the skill of using software to model objects in 3D with her work in action figures, and a new technique was born: using software to model jewelry.

Sheila later worked with friend Ishan Khosla and the Typecraft Initiative to produce Protagonist Design’s first line of 3D modelled jewelry: a series of English alphabet pendants. Ishan is a kindred spirit, passionate about studying and preserving traditional embroidery styles in Barmer, India. Knowledge of this art form is disappearing from the region because of the ongoing geopolitical tensions with neighbor Pakistan. The team at Typecraft Initiative designs typefaces based on original embroidery and printmaking by local artists. What is a bleak situation—the loss of traditional knowledge and techniques—became a source of transformation, creativity, and beauty through their work.

When I ask who inspires her in business, the answer comes almost immediately: Yvon Chouinard, the founder of the Patagonia clothing and gear company. Sheila admires his decision to donate the company to a trust to preserve the business’s environmental conscientiousness. As a brand, Patagonia is easily recognized, well-known for superior quality and craft, and guided by a strong moral compass—all things Sheila aspires to be. Her father and grandfather have passed away, but continue to inspire her with their dedication to strong ethics and commitment to quality work.

When questions of ethics arise these days, the topic of AI isn’t far behind. I ask tentatively whether AI has found a home among the tools she uses and Sheila laughs. She has experimented with using AI image generators to illustrate her project ideas but most seem to fail spectacularly at capturing what she imagines. As well, Sheila values transparency and authenticity. When using images to communicate, she prefers to work with original photos.

Protagonist Design is presently supported by a number of other technologies:

• Custom domain (Shopify)

• Crowd-sourced project funding (Kickstarter)

• Drawing and graphics (Procreate and GIMP)

• 3D modelling software (Fusion360, now known as Autodesk Fusion)

• Manufacturer (Shapeways)

• Private community of supporters and promoters (WhatsApp)

In building skill in these technologies, Sheila says her strength lies in her curiosity; it gives her the ability to successfully learn and navigate through new systems.

The advice Sheila would give to new creators starting out?

Launch when you’re still embarrassed!

She paraphrased Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn, referencing his well-known saying. On this they agree: there is more to learn by doing than by imagining.

As we wrap up our discussion, Sheila reveals she is an unabashed foodie with an interest in international food and a bias towards the “new, weird thing.” Her favourite place to go in Saskatoon at the moment is Petra Market—an international grocery, bakery, and butcher shop—where customers can order delicious Mediterranean-style baked goods to go.

Thank you, Sheila, for taking the time to teach me about your business and share your amazing story! To learn more about Protagonist Design and its kintsugi-inspired jewelry line, check out the project’s Kickstarter campaign.

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In contemporary genetics, chimerism refers to a tendency for humans to have living cells in their body with DNA that is not their own, that belongs to another human. There are two mechanisms that describe how this happens in nature.

I recently came across the concept of microchimerism from an article my mum shared from the Atlantic published in 2024. Here, I learned that a small number of cells can pass the barrier between pregnant mothers and their growing embryos. Women who have been pregnant can have cells lodged within their body that originated with their children; children have cells from their mother. This phenomenon appears to happen consistently with each pregnancy and in every organ tested.

As a result, anyone could have a small number of cells living within them from ancestors, mother and siblings, along pregnancy lines.

The research on microchimerism is still developing and its genetic benefit has yet to be uncovered definitively. It makes for some fascinating ideas for speculative fiction though!

• Imagine: memories passing directly from mother to child

• Imagine: pieces of each other that continue to live on following a loss

• Imagine: a woman’s power that grows with each pregnancy

• Imagine: honouring mothers’ bodies as collectors and distributors of genetic heritage

The second mechanism was introduced to me on a spring walk with a friend a year or two ago. She explained that macrochimerism—where a significant proportion of an individual’s DNA comes from multiple sources—happens when twin embryos fuse into a single entity in-utero. This is thought to be relatively common, affecting up to 15% of the population. It gives rise to a diverse spectrum of human experience, from heterochromia to transgender self-identification.

These two mechanisms mean that an individual’s genetics are not isolated, unique, or completely determined by the classic Punnett square from high school biology. Research suggests that we are much more complex.

Our genetic makeup may be better understood as a mosaic. Each person is a collection of pieces from an ancient and ever-evolving genetic story connecting families together, spanning generations.

My imagination lights up as I think of the weight of genetic history that each body carries and how furthering this research might impact our society in the future. Our connections to each other run deeper than previously thought; our identities less distinct. We are quite literally pieces of each other in different aspects. Perhaps one day our connectedness and our diversity will be honoured more than our independence. What might life be like then, I wonder?

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It’s 3am, all the windows in the house are black. I can’t quite fall asleep so I creep downstairs to lay on the couch. It’s peaceful and quiet. One of my dogs soon joins me. He is big and confident and curly-haired, still a puppy. He lays beside me and is soon snoring gently. I watch him with soft eyes and contemplate the nature of dreams and reality.

According to oneirologists Domhoff and Schneider, dreams can be defined as follows:

“[Dreams are] a report of a memory of a cognitive experience that happens under the kinds of conditions that are most frequently produced in a state called sleep.”

There are some key components to consider with this definition:

• We can remember dreams occasionally upon waking

• We believe we experience dreams through our senses; they are actually a purely cognitive experience

• We usually dream while we are asleep

Perhaps it is the late hour; the more I read this definition, the more I begin to question the separateness of dreaming and waking states. I think there’s a chance there are many opportunities for cross-over between them. The most commonly experienced of these is the ability to recall dreams upon waking.

The clarity with which we remember dreams varies depending on a couple of different factors. Dreams are thought to intensify over the course of the night in terms of imagery, colors, and emotions. The final dreams of the night tend to be the most emotional and the most likely to be recalled upon waking. Dreamers can recall dreams about 50% of the time when awakened earlier in the night; towards morning, recall can climb to almost 99%. The ability to recall our dreams tends to drop off after waking, as the time since dreaming increases.

Our experiences during waking hours also tend to be largely forgotten over time, according to a concept in learning called the Forgetting Curve. New information is forgotten at a rate of 50% within 1 hour of learning; up to 90% is lost within a week. This is a natural consequence of the data-density of human experience and the limitations of our brain. For most of us, it isn’t possible to remember everything.

My other dog joins me downstairs. His personality is more timid, more anxious. He licks my leg briefly as if we are reassuring each other of this change in nighttime routine. The dog eventually settles down, high on a couch cushion. His dreams are more fitful, perhaps more fearful. Do his dreams reflect his reality?

Most of our dreams are authentic dreams, which are a relatively faithful reflection of the dreamer’s actual thoughts and experiences from waking life. Our dreams do actually reflect our lived realities.

The goal of this type of dreaming is to rehearse lived experiences and reinforce thought and behaviour patterns through a process called synaptic efficacy maintenance. This process happens with high fidelity for dreams of relatively recent experiences; over time, however, this process tends to accumulate “errors”.

Illusory dreams are the result of experiencing these synaptic efficacy maintenance errors in sleep. They have content that is otherworldly, impossible, or nonsensical in nature. This type of dreaming is consistent with the brain patterns of those experiencing delusions in some mental disorders.

We can imagine that we remember as much about our dreams as we do about our waking life, that reality bleeds easily into dreams, and dreams into reality. What then is the difference between these two states? Could there be just one continuous state that we all inhabit?

Perhaps our initial definition is too narrow.

Perhaps all of us are walking this Earth as living dream machines and the world is actually quite a bit more mystical than we’ve come to believe.

My head nods gently on my chest and I briefly succumb to that sweet restful respite called sleep.

It is just before dawn, the windows frame images of an early fall morning. It is peaceful but no longer quiet: I can hear birds begin to chirp and sing in the sweep of lilacs that line one side of the yard. I could creep back upstairs and get cozy under the covers of my bed; my dogs would wake and follow. Instead I toddle over to the coffee maker, dreaming of what the day will bring.

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I feel like I’ve recently lost faith in tech companies in North America. I can’t put my finger on when it started; my experience is just a slow erosion in trust that we’re solving the problems today that the world needs solving. From ridiculous niche applications to the relentless corporate drive towards AI-based productivity. From news about yet another round of tech layoffs to the threat of rolling blackouts to support powering new data centres.

Through various avenues, the message I’m getting is that the North American market is saturated with tech companies consistently choosing tech for tech’s sake, choosing the comfort of a few over the many.

A change here means more than reminding ourselves to touch grass periodically for our mental wellbeing or turning to yoga to silence our bodies’ discomfort. A long-term solution requires a leap in perspective.

I saw the following post while checking Instagram this morning and finding it felt like the start of a much-needed personal shift.

Its message is simple:

• North America isn’t the only tech builder in the world (of course)

• Other regions worldwide are solving problems differently, prioritizing differently

• We need to look for tech leadership and direction beyond expanding the comfort of an already comfortable few

Africa, as showcased in the post, has a flourishing tech community that is solving cutting-edge problems. They succeed despite numerous obstacles by solving for the real-life challenges of their incredibly diverse population.

This reminder gives me hope for the future that a shift in our collective focus is possible.

Some questions I’m asking myself:

• What behaviors and businesses do I support that reinforce tech for tech’s sake?

• How can I help those in need in my community (my small business is just a start)? In the world?

• What might our world look like with a shifted focus—what could we work towards?

I don’t have the answers to these questions yet, but I am curious to dive deeper.

I do believe tech has the incredible potential to make “impossible lives possible,” we just need to focus on solving the right problems.

What are your thoughts on the current state of tech?

When asked for my favourite book to recommend, I always return to one uniquely dreamlike and surreal work of fiction.

The Seas by Samantha Hunt is an otherworldly coming-of-age tale featuring a young woman trapped in a bleak seaside town and stuck in an impossible first love. She believes she is a mermaid. She must contend with grief, loneliness, the lasting influence of the Iraq War, and the deadly consequences of fantasy.

My heart split when I finished reading this book for the first time, and a lasting love for magical realism and mermaid folklore was born.

In the years since, I’ve found myself drawn to contemporary mermaid literature again and again.

Most recently, I just finished reading The Sirens by Emilia Hart where a young woman in Australia leaves university under potentially criminal circumstances to seek answers from her older sister. They are both plagued by strange dreams, they sleepwalk, and they both struggle with an unusual skin condition. However, it appears her sister isn’t where she’s supposed to be either. Family secrets are exposed, old rifts are healed, and the power of women in a world of men is at once sinister and serene.

I picked up a copy of American Mermaid by Julia Langbein at an indie bookstore on a recent trip to Nova Scotia. Here, a bored high school English teacher writes a novel featuring an educated eco-warrior mermaid that gets the attention of Hollywood film executives. She watches in horror as her script co-writers systematically dismantle her strong female heroine into a brainless sex object, until… something strange starts happening.

Late last year, I read The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey, where a mermaid is caught off the coast of a Caribbean island in the fishing nets of American tourists. She is strung up as a trophy and abused by foreigners and locals alike until her rescue by a local fisherman named David. The pair fall in love, but will they survive their differences, the wrath of the Americans, and the judgement of their community?

On the heels of Roffey’s work came River Mumma by Zalika Reid-Benta, where a Jamaican water deity appears to a young woman in Toronto and gives her 24 hours to complete a strange quest. In attempting to complete the deity’s request, she meets a pantheon of challengers both mythological and mundane that test the boundaries of her friendships, reconnect her with her ancestral roots, and teach her to face her quarter-life crisis bravely.

All of these books share themes of:

• The destructiveness of colonialism and entitlement, sexism and patriarchy

• The ocean as a refuge, a mysterious and primarily female domain

• The potential for female power to be a force of creativity

All of them contain allegorical clues that can teach contemporary women to step into their power in today’s world.

Each is set in a post-colonial wasteland, where to be feminine is to be perceived as unfocused, delusional, weak, vulnerable, emotional, tragic, and easily manipulated by a masculine mainstream.

Many of the protagonists have still managed to find success despite these obstacles. They have worked to prove they are smart, capable, and can get things done within the confines of masculine ideals. Lucy (The Sirens) is accepted into a prestigious journalism program; Penny (American Mermaid) finishes writing her debut novel and it is selected for a potential movie adaptation; Alicia (River Mumma) graduates with her hard-earned degree.

The material success comes at the cost of subconscious pain however, which can manifest in unusual ways. Lucy (The Sirens) wakes up from an episode of sleepwalking, haunted by strange dreams, to find she is committing a crime; Penny (American Mermaid) sustains many compromises to her creation’s vision in the name of completing the movie script; Aycayia (The Mermaid of Black Conch) is cursed by other women for her beauty; Alicia (River Mumma) finds herself in debt with no job prospects, disconnected from her family, and the unwilling disciple of a demanding water deity.

In order to survive these trials, each protagonist must descend into a period of darkness to reclaim what it means to be whole, to be feminine, once more. Lucy (The Sirens) escapes the immediate consequences of her actions by hiding out at her sister’s abandoned house; Penny (American Mermaid) loses touch with reality and begins to over-identify with her creation; Aycayia (The Mermaid of Black Conch) rediscovers what it’s like to be human; Alicia (River Mumma) uses her wits to attempt to fulfill the deity’s request.

Each character emerges from this experience with greater understanding of their nature and can better integrate the feminine with the masculine aspects of themselves. Lucy (The Sirens) uses her memory and journalism skills to work out the truth about her sister and where she has gone; Penny (American Mermaid) eventually resolves her struggles with both the boundaries of her creative powers and the expectations of life in Hollywood; Aycayia (The Mermaid of Black Conch) must come to terms with the limitations of her body; Alicia (River Mumma) regains a sense of her lost heritage, and her confidence as well.

This is exactly the cycle described by Maureen Murdoc in her classic analysis The Heroine’s Journey, which adapts Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey to a female and minority experience. It teaches women and minorities to step into their power in the contemporary world by learning to embrace the parts of themselves that mainstream society might reject. It subverts logic with intuition, independence with community, material success with creativity, and entitlement with justice.

You’ll notice that The Seas is missing from every part of this analysis. While some of its plot points seem to fit neatly into a few of Murdoc’s categories of experience, most didn’t. The Seas is its own creature, and I can’t recommend it enough.

Couple the ideas in this article with further reading:

• Chlorine by Jade Song

• Salt on Your Tongue by Charlotte Runcie

• Women and Other Monsters by Jess Zimmerman

It’s nearing the end of class and my shins are killing me. We had devoted quite a bit of time to working on allegro, which means a lot of quick movements and jumping. Hence the burning shins.

I’m part of a small group of adult women learning ballet, each a few years into our ballet training journeys. This class is particularly intimidating because it is focused on mastering a suite of about 20 different intermediate-level exercises. It strains both my memory and my body in a way they’ve never been challenged before.

We’re tired, sweaty, and discouraged; the petit allegro enchainment exercise isn’t coming together. Our instructor is stern but encouraging with her group of newly minted intermediates.

She shares:

Ballet is an ego journey. Everyone goes through periods where they feel like they’re not making progress, but I promise you progress is happening. To get better, the only thing you can’t do is nothing.

I drove home afterwards feeling strangely quiet, turning over my instructor’s words in my head. How often in life we are faced with challenges that strain our sense of self.

As a former nationally-competitive athlete, it is humbling both to have lost physical skill in adulthood and to begin training to recover what I can in an entirely new realm.

As someone attempting to get a new business off the ground and build a client base from scratch for the first time, I often feel like a clumsy novice dwarfed by experts.

As someone who routinely struggles with unsteady mental health, I know that taking any action at all can feel like a risk or a drain that alarms and confuses my body.

As someone who has survived the loss of a loved one, I know that joy and meaning in life are possible despite crushing evidence to the contrary.

In each case, the way forward is a step at a time.

Get in the car.

Go to the parking lot.

Open the door.

Put on the slippers.

Walk into the studio.

Hand on the barre.

Dance.

Ballet has given me a safe place to practice my arabesques—yes—but I’m also stretching and expanding my ideas of what is possible. When I’m floundering and out of step, when I’m on stage and move to incorrect choreography, there’s no taking back what’s happened. But I can choose to meet it with poise and grace. I can come to class and joyfully discover new ways to mess up a pirouette every day until it happens as if by magic—progress.

What is something you’ve discovered in life that challenges you in ways you never thought possible?

For a long time, tarot wasn’t something to which I found myself particularly drawn; now I use it almost daily as a journaling tool. How did this transition happen? What do I get out of the exercise? How do I use it to its best advantage? If you’re curious, let’s dive deeper and explore revelation and tarot.

As a physics undergraduate at a prestigious program, I firmly (read: naively) believed that the scientific method could be applied to solve any problem and regrettably dismissed many things that I considered too “woo-woo”—tarot among them. It seemed like a contemporary anachronism, an artefact from a mystic bygone era. The idea of a divination tool promising an impossible level of certainty disagreed with my imperfect but flourishing understanding of free choice and statistics. Any budding curiosity was quickly nipped by the unfortunate pressure to seem lofty and intelligent.

Once I left university, I had some learning and growing to do, and I did.

I realized I didn’t feel like a “normal” person for most of my life and began exploring this more closely in my early twenties. I also rediscovered a love of writing. These interests eventually drew me to Lauren Sapala—a book coach who now hosts online workshops teaching life skills to INFJ and INFP people. My heart lit up. She used words like “empath,” “spirit,” and “intuition” with a straight face. I was curious and found myself dipping my toes into “manifestation” despite myself.

I found myself spending more and more time in the folklore section of my local independent bookstore. One day, my partner gifted me a beautiful tarot deck that paired each card with a story from around the world. I gushed over the acquisition and then naturally it sat on my shelf unused for some time while I got curious about other things (mermaids, mostly). I would proudly bring the deck out on occasion and do a reading “cold”—without any real preparation—using the instructions provided but it seldom seemed relevant to anyone’s actual life and struggles.

I took a writing course this past year by Brooke Adams Law, a writing coach I followed and liked on Instagram for a few years. She emphasizes the importance of writing rituals that engage all of our senses and performing them regularly to prepare ourselves to write. An exercise she engages in as part of her own writing ritual is to draw a single tarot card and meditate on its meaning and relevance as a way to incorporate the subconscious in her writing. Ah!

I pulled out my gorgeous deck and began to use it with my morning journaling, finding that I got much more out of the experience than by doing a reading “cold”. It felt more like therapy than divination; it forced me to see problem areas in my life through a new perspective.

And now?

I use tarot daily and have found many ways to integrate it into my routines. I found an unusual RPG tabletop game that uses tarot instead of dice as a game mechanic (how cool is that?). I recently finished a fantastic fiction book by Sarah Henstra called The Lost Tarot.

For fun one evening, I pulled out the deck with my partner and we did some journaling followed by a tarot reading; the context-driven tarot technique was born (described below).

The shift from dismissal to curiosity to finding a useful way to engage with this tool has taken many years, and I’ve learned many things about myself along the way. Meditating on this journey gives me pause—what new things will I learn in the future that I even now dismiss? I suspect that if a human lives long enough, every idea and opinion they hold close will be challenged in this way. Life has a way of smoothing out our rough edges, if we choose to listen.

The Context-Driven Tarot

Gather some supplies:

• Tarot deck

• Notecards

• Pens or pencils

• Timer

Set a timer for 5-7 minutes and briefly journal about what’s going on in 3 or 4 different facets of your life, one on each notecard. For example: I picked Creativity, Business, Relationships, and Energy-levels as my facets and wrote a sentence or two about each on the notecards.

Times up! Time to start the tarot reading. I usually shuffle the tarot deck and draw three cards off the top and lay them out in order, side by side—this is known as a three-card spread.

Each card, direction, and placement has special meaning in this type of reading. The card itself represents some aspect of human life. The direction (whether the card is upright or reversed) can add nuance to its meaning. Decks often come with guidebooks that can help with understanding the meaning of each card (Wikipedia is also a good resource). The card’s placement can mean different things from person to person—I like the three placements to represent where you are, where you’re going, and how you’re going to get there.

An example spread might be: Five of Wands (reversed), Six of Swords (upright), and King of Coins (reversed).

An example interpretation might start by examining each card:

• The first card, representing where I am, is linked to compromise, peace, harmony, resolution, and conflict avoidance.

• The second card, representing where I’m going, is linked to healing, moving forward, stability, escape, and journeys.

• The third card, representing how I’m getting there, is linked to corruption, materialism, ruthlessness, authority, and indulgence.

Now, we apply the spread’s interpretation to each notecard to see how they might be applied.

At first, I felt squeamish about seeing the reversed King of Coins, but the more I thought about its meaning, the more I came to embrace it.

When learning a new creative practice, doesn’t it help to accept that it’s never possible to make something that matches the idea in your head, that the idea is always “corrupted” in execution? That’s always the way with art, sometimes for the better! Perfection isn’t what I’m after, just consistent practice.

When starting a new business, isn’t it important to act as the authority figure in my life and indulge by betting on my eventual success?

When there’s a relationship in my life that isn’t serving me or when struggling with my health, it becomes vitally important to be ruthless with how I spend my valuable energy, right?

Because I journaled about the things in the back of my mind beforehand, I was able to much more easily make sense of how each card might symbolically offer advice.

Do you find this technique intriguing? Have you given it a try?

I’ve been avoiding writing my first instalment of a newsletter for a few days now because it felt like my purpose hadn’t quite crystallized yet. Why write a newsletter at all? What can I provide that people would find interesting and useful?

I had a conversation with my friend over breakfast yesterday morning that changed that a little for me. Things took a turn and began to be a bit more clear.

It all started with a box of Brittania cookies made in India by a British food supply company—the most popular brand of cookies in the nation.

She spoke of the lasting impact of British colonialism in India. Every once in a while, political leaders in India attempt to seek reparations from the British government for the historical and ongoing damage caused by colonialism. Whether they succeed or fail seems almost immaterial—there’s still an entire nation’s needs to address. Perhaps healing and purpose doesn’t come from external validation.

We can apply the same argument on an individual level. Childhood traumas that follow us into adulthood eventually become a choice: either you choose to continue to react to an internal reality or you challenge those internal beliefs and find a path towards healing.

My initial thesis: healing and purpose come from within and must include a certain level of acceptance of the imperfection of life.

We see evidence of this thinking in our workplaces. At a department meeting this past week, my coworkers and I were advised that while we can’t control political leaders or foreign wars, we can control how we show up for work each day.

This sentiment was challenged by a personal story my friend shared that meant we don’t have to accept atrocities as normal.

I shared a story about someone I admire: Amanda Nguyen is an astronaut and the first Vietnamese woman in space. She was raped as a student at Harvard University and went on to draft the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act, which passed unanimously through the United States Congress and was signed into law by President Obama in 2016. Her work in civil rights earned her a Nobel Peace Prize nomination in 2019.

On the heels of Amanda’s story came my second thesis: healing and purpose come from helping our communities’ current and future members survive and thrive, they come from making the world a more fair and equitable place.

However, everyone has different life circumstances: some can follow in Amanda’s footsteps and affect change at the federal level while others cannot.

Third thesis: healing and purpose comes from living in alignment with your values when you have the capacity.

My friend and I parted for the day, but the conversation still rang in my ears. I began to critically examine what I spend my time on each day and whether it is in alignment with my personal values. What I found was actually a little surprising to me, though probably not to those who know me well.

I found that I want to help people.

This is fundamentally what my new business is to me: using my time and skills to help those around me be successful in their creative and business endeavours. For those who don’t know, I’m attempting to start a small business helping people using my tech skills.

This is also what this newsletter is to me: an opportunity to explore the world around me—the silly and the serious—to discover what is meaningful to me and my community through expression. And then to act on it!

What are your thoughts on healing and connecting with purpose?