It’s a different direction, working for someone else instead of for myself, and it has changed things for me a lot. For starters, at the end of the day I have enough money to pay my bills and put a couple of dollars in the bank. This is good, as I have some major debt right now (karmic and otherwise).

Not going to talk about the breakup. It’s private.

Protest photography seems to be what I end up doing a lot of. I guess because it’s easy and you can get some drama out of it. I also have a project I am working on called Images of Eve. When it’s done it will be female nudes printed on scrap metal using cyanotype. Trying to get models lined up and get shoots booked and the like right now.

Weird how economic status changes your opinion of something like public medicine isn’t it?

I hurt myself two and a half months ago. I was sparring with someone and I blew out my knee. Hurt like hell. Of course they did an x-ray (one of those cool bits of technology that I want to keep in the world). It didn’t show anything. Then they decided to do an MRI, another one of those cool bits of tech. It took a bit to get an appointment because I don’t have a lot of money, and our public medical system has a limited number of MRI machines. I will find out soon if I get to have surgery to restore my knee (odds are strongly in favour). This represents so many different ways I am relying on the modern world to keep my basic mobility about me. This modern world is in threat. The IEA has finally not only acknowledged that peak oil is real, but that it hit a few years ago, and we are now on the downslope of Hibbert’s peak. That means shit is going to get much worse than most people think it is, and way faster than anyone seems to realize. The IEA claims we have nothing to worry about, that alternate methods of oil extraction will keep the production numbers stable for the next few decades, and by then we will have figured out something else to do for our energy needs. Somehow this doesn’t make me feel comforted.

Way of the Preserver is coming along. One of our members is allowing us to use some land that belongs to his family. It will give us an area to learn valuable skills. Initially this will be through clearing the land and building Monastery 1. Monastery 1 is going to be a general purpose workshop that should grow to include a forge and a laboratory in addition to the more prosaic workshop elements. We are planning to build the initial building from adobe bricks that we form ourselves. By the end of the process we should, as a community, be able to build a simple structure easily. This is my answer to the need to do something about the way I see the world slipping away from us as a species, a way for us to fight at the encroaching darkness.

If you would like to contribute to the Way of the Preserver, and the continuation of knowledge, please let me know. I would love to have as many ideas as possible, as well as increasing the number of hands. Way of the Preserver is an experiment right now, but one that seems to show initial signs of working. Help it to grow.

A caution case means that at some point domestic violence was involved or suspected (to the point of police involvement) in the relationship. That happens to be true for us. See, after we broke up I was late going to see my son one day. I was having a bad week that week and I was later by about fifteen minutes. It was also shortly after my ex discovered that I had a new girlfriend (nothing to do with why we broke up, which was more than a year before this). She screamed at me to get out, because I was late. I turned and left. She ran up behind me and punched me in the head, repeatedly. I turned and restrained her, then tried to leave again. She hit me in the back of the head again. We repeated this pattern of restraint and assault a dozen or so more times before I was finally on the stairwell leaving the building. She threw a kick at me on the stairs and screamed that if I left she would call the cops and tell them I beat her up.

When I got home I called the police and told them what had happened. They came and took me down to the station. The interview lasted several hours and I was on my third day of trying to quit smoking. I asked the police officer if he had a cigarette. He didn’t smoke, but he allowed me to go to the store and grab a pack, since I hadn’t been arrested for anything and he obviously believed me. My ex was also at the station. True to her word she had called before I got around to it. She told the police that I had become abusive to her at the building. At one point I overheard the two police officers (the one who picked me up and the one who picked her up) comparing notes. They had noticed a little discrepancy between her story and the physical evidence. We both had bruising, but mine was on the back of my head and hers was on her knuckles. Still, the crown prosecutor decided to charge both of us and let things go to trial. The cop who arrested me punched the wall and yelled motherfucker when he heard that. He was a really nice guy, and I can’t say enough positive about the police in my case.

Flash forward more than a year. It is time for my trial and there turns out to have been an impartial witness who saw the whole thing. A woman on my ex’s floor (the whole thing happened in the halls of the apartment building she lived in) had seen the whole incident from her peep hole. She watched me try to walk away, again and again, and she watched me get attacked, again and again. After her testimony the crown prosecutor stood up and said that “There is no evidence this individual has committed any crime.”. My case was dropped on the spot. When it came time for the trial of my ex I was called on as a witness. My ex’s attorney tried to imply that since I had martial arts experience I should have been able to resolve the situation more gently than I did – an insane defence strategy since it automatically doesn’t justify the attacks in the first place, and because I resolved the situation without ever once resorting to striking back. My ex was found guilty of assault and given probation with a condition of anger management.

Now, every time maintenance enforcement sends her any info on child support they remind her that it is a caution case, not to approach me as that could be dangerous, etc. The woman who was found guilty of assaulting me is cautioned that approaching me could endanger her, while I get nothing – there has never been a note cautioning me to avoid her, or that she might attack me. Not once in all this time. The funny thing is I only found out about this because she told me. See, the stuff between us isn’t raw anymore. We’ve been apart for many, many more years than we were together, and our son is almost an adult (two more months of child support and then it is over for good – unless one counts my back debt) and she is one of the most rabidly anti-child support people I have ever met. She believes that Canadian child support laws constitute a human rights violation, and that no man should ever have to be subject to them. She has no control over maintenance enforcement and actually uses my child support payments to pay off her current husbands child support debt (which arguably he should never have been subjected to), and would waive it if the courts gave her the option. She told me about the caution letters, with more than a hint of bitterness towards the system that values my financial contribution over the fact that my son and I are still extremely close, that I am still in his life, driving to the nearby town where my ex lives to pick him up and drop him off completely without complaint, over the fact that I fought for joint custody and lost despite the fact that she had been convicted of domestic violence. Basically, somehow, it became me, and her, and her current husband’s ex, railing at a system that makes finances a binding glue no matter how wrong. Not one of us wants the money to change hands, not one of us has their lives improved by it (my ex’s current husband’s ex is quite well off and her child is grown and out of the house – the system is making my ex’s current husband pay back child support for the child’s entire life despite the mother never having asked for it).

So, that’s why I’m a caution case to the department of justice, maintenance enforcement division.

So, fuck the brand giants, fuck starbucks, and Mcdonalds and Nike, and Comedy Central, and SyFy. It’s time to go out and find a piece of reality. I have a new project I am starting, called the preservers. There are some details of it I will make public now, some will come in time. So, heres a public one. When you get a coupon from Starbucks, carry it with you. When a homeless person asks you for change, politely explain that you have no change on you, but give them the Starbucks coupon. Do it as often as you can. This is mission number 1. There will be more.

The funny thing? I now own a branding agency. Really, my company does branding, advertising and web development.

The funny thing is, I looked in the mirror tonight, and I am in way better shape than I have been in a while. Less than three full weeks, and I am seeing major results.

Tonight I did a total of 82 Push ups (5 sets, 60 second breaks) and I’m typing this during the last 60 second break on my situps (total will be 106, 25 left to go).

Okay, finished the set. One thing I have noticed is the difference in feeling between max pushups and max situps. When I max out on my pushups what stops me is the shaking, and the fact that my body just won’t go up anymore. With situps I notice that it’s really a matter of pain (not a lot of pain, but some) at the last rep or so. When I start to feel that, I stop right away. I know that pain is usually a bad sign (and note, I’m not talking about burn, I feel that plenty well before the end of my situps set). It subsides quickly, and doesn’t seem to be an issue after a couple of minutes, but as it’s happening, I just can’t go anymore.

Anyway, I will keep this updated with my progress, and in the end I will post the spreadsheet I am using for tracking. One other major factor: I train Taekwondo four days a week and Parkour at least 3 hours on Sunday as well as assorted other bits of Parkour as they come up.