Future Perfect

With the end of decade, I have been randomly sampling posts from my blog. Some interesting feelings arose from reading 10 years of writing. This blog mostly documents food and music and although no one reads it except myself and search bots, I only include personal details obliquely. So when I encounter these tidbits, I try to recall the circumstances. Some came back immediately, others took a bit more work, and a few eluded me completely. I've lived a quiet life, many might even say experientially impoverished. Even so, there were still points of inflection where things could have changed, likely onto a better "alternate timeline". Yet I don't feel much regret because when they involve other people, imagining what I could have done differently seemed disrespectful. People have their own agency and not chess pieces in my Game of Life (to torture a metaphor). I only rue not purchasing a little place of my own since real estate choices were under my control.

The process of gentrification throughout Toronto was documented peripherally in my posts, especially when they described defunct shops or old bands. If I had started this blog 2 decades ago, been a serious critic who attended a dozen show a week, or was a flâneur visiting every part of the city with camera and notebook in hand, progress would have been even more historically evident.

Looking ahead, I feel some ambivalence. First, I love Toronto but it's getting expensive and impersonal. A city of open neighbourhoods has turned into a city of opaque condos. Second, I naturally gravitate to small pleasures. But my aching teeth, knees, and joints remind me daily that at best only a few decades remain, and I should think more about the difference between contented and hermetic.