For those of you who get their news from this blog page and nowhere else, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I’ve had a chapter out for a while now. Final Answer Chapter 5 was posted a bit ago, with Dinner Break Chapter 2 having been posted today as well.

I love clichés. I think that’s been well-established by now. In stories or in life, I really enjoy cheesy goodness that makes us feel shallow yet important emotions. Moments like that really make me feel human. Recently I encountered a feeling and a cliché that I didn’t really like: the feeling that my outlook on things has changed even after spending a brief time locked up.

Since I’m going to be talking about being incarcerated, I want to state (possibly repeat?) for the record that I attended a protest and got held in detention for a few weeks. I didn’t commit, in my eyes, a moral crime or anything like that. Given that, I certainly don’t have a very favorable view of the police or the justice system of Canada right now. More importantly, I now feel as though I, on a smaller scale, understand those cliché characters in movies or TV shows that spend some time in prison and just stare off into sunsets afterwards, going, “Man, it’s hard going back to life after being on the inside, maaaan.”

It’s not because my time was particularly harrowing. It was bad, but many have it worse. It was being alerted, firsthand, to another world. For a few weeks I got to see how a lot of people lived; people I never would have met or associated with beforehand. I got to see not just their daily life, but also… what life means to them. After the first few days locked up, you get this sense that your life just exists within four walls. It kind of shatters your idea of what life is, how limitless it is, how free you feel… how invincible you are. All of it came crashing down.

Given that, I didn’t really find any solid motivation to write until a few weeks ago. I entered a bleak period of, “Am I doing things wrong?” After getting my normal life back, having my normal life again felt weirdly alien, and it’s surprising that my outlook had shifted this much after only a few weeks away. At most, I expected the feeling would last the next few weeks after that, but here I am, and the feeling isn’t going away anytime soon.

I don’t think my writing has suffered (and I sure hope it hasn’t). As a matter of fact, I love the two chapters I wrote, but then again, I got to spend time writing some of my now-favorite characters, as well as an old friend that I think a few of you won’t be expecting. If you know, you know. I was glad to confirm that my joy of writing hasn’t left me. I’m frankly quite surprised I’m this emotionally affected as it is. If I take a step back and look at it all from outside of my perspective, it isn’t that big. At the same time… I can’t escape considering how I might have readers that are serving a real sentence in jail right now. If that’s you, I hope you’re doing well, and I think you’re quite admirable for adjusting to the life you currently live. Maybe you even find this life preferable – movies make it seem so dramatic, but the sense of community is genuinely interesting. Plus, prison isn’t a monolith, and everyone is going to have a different experience with it, dependent on so many factors. Either way, I hope my writing is bringing you some joy, if you’re allowed to access this website at all.

The old me would have made some kind of cheesy resolution to communicate and write more in 2025 or something. Current me won’t be doing that. Again, maybe this moment will pass, but I feel very different right now, and I’m choosing to live out this feeling instead of denying it to myself. Plus, this could just be the winter blahs coupled with the bad timing of my detention, and then my dramatic mind took it from there. Who can say? I think I will make a resolution to engage in my world more, and try to be more aware of the restrictions I put on myself without even realizing it. That’s one thing detention helped with. I’m always on the hunt for new experiences, and while I can’t say this was a happy one, if I wanted novelty, I think I hit the jackpot. Food for thought. I’ll talk to you all next year.