Content Warning – I briefly talk about the death of one of my parents. No graphic details or anything like that but if that is something you do not wish to read about – skip this post.
Table of Contents
Remembering My Dad
November 2025 marks 5 years since my dad passed away. So every November after 2020 has been a month of remembrance. It is also a month where I take stock of my life for the past year and reflect on what it is I am grateful for. Hence, the “spirit of Thanksgiving”, I don’t celebrate that in the way it is usually done in the US or here in Canada for many reasons that I cannot be bothered to enumerate right now. But, the core idea of reflection & giving thanks is something I find personally useful.
Perhaps it is a side effect of the initial shock from hearing the news of my father’s death but I never made note of the exact date of his passing. It also never seemed the opportune moment to ask my sister, “hey quick question, what was the date for our dad’s death?”, that is not exactly a question easily asked. I do think my sister with her dark sense of humour would find it funny though.
That is why I mark the entire month of November as a month of remembrance and reflection. I have talked about my relation to grief on this blog in the past so I won’t belabour that particular point. That grief is more of a slow stead pulse in the background during this month, it creates a mental space for reflecting on my own life for the past year.
What I’m Grateful For
I am grateful for my close family – my mom, sister and my brother. Especially my sister.
I am grateful for my friends, old and new. I am grateful for the continued existence of the Queer Computer Club here in Toronto. We are coming up on the second annual general meeting for the organization in December, how time flies!
I am grateful for my good health – both physical and mental. There’s been an up and downs as there are every year but I am grateful for my perseverance and resilience.
This has been an incredible year of reading and I am grateful for every amazing book I read this year, I’ll be writing an entire blog post about this come the end of the year. Along those lines, I am eternally grateful for the Toronto Public Library system, I have made visits to the local library a part of my weekend routine and it has been a boon to my mental health this year.
I am grateful for the amount of writing I have been able to get done in the past year, mainly in the form of my book reviews. I have had a few friends tell me they enjoy reading my book reviews and I am also grateful for that.
I got to go to Montreal for a week this year and I am grateful that I have the ability and means to fulfill my personal goal of spending every birthday in my 30s in a different city every year. Also that duck confit was fucking heavenly, I gotta hand it to the French on that one.
I am grateful to have a decent job that doesn’t stress or burn me out which to me is the most important quality in a job. Not something I take for granted, considering my experience with burnout and also have y’all seen the state of the economy? Yeah.
I am sure I am forgetting something that I am grateful for but I think I have gotten all the things that matter to me.
Other Reflections
I never wrote a start of year blog post for this year with my goals and resolutions for the year. That was because the end of 2024 was rather tumultuous for me and I didn’t quite start settling down mentally until the middle of 2025. So I just never ended up writing such a blog post. Life is just like that sometimes.
The end of 2025 is shaping up to be a much more stable time for me and as such I am hoping to write a resolutions post for 2026, which will hopefully be published sometime in January 2026. I am also planning on writing several end of year blog posts reflecting on the art I had the pleasure of enjoying this past year.
I think that’s all I have for y’all. See y’all in the next one.
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