ABOUT ME (as of May 13, 2019)

The more of these I write, the more I wonder how meaningfully a written snapshot can really capture me; but I can ramble for a bit.

I'm Canadian-born but I’m never 100% comfortable ‘localizing’ my Canadian-ness because as a military brat we moved a few times between New Brunswick, Ontario, and Quebec. So repeat-uprootings and later trying to take to heart a sort of pan-humanist view led to me feeling like geography doesn’t (or shouldn’t) do that much to define me. I’m from “around,” and home is a flexible term.

I'm a gay, for which I’m thankful, because otherwise I likely would have been a totally “normal” middle-class white cis guy made witless with privilege, and might never have come to concern myself with justice. But being gay (and nerdy as a kid) made me an outsider, made me acutely aware of how wrongly people sometimes treat each other, made me a progressive humanist preoccupied with liberation and ethics. Bound up in that, I'm also an empiricist, an agnostic atheist, a secularist, and philosophically I've leaned Buddhist since ~2008. I’m also inclined to socialism and if there’s ever a commie revolution, I’ll happily switch careers to guillotine-sharpener and/or propaganda pampheteer. Or maybe something in logistics.

I'm an air force brat, my best friend is army, and the affect has rubbed off a bit because I'm not-infrequently mistaken for military myself, but I actually have a strong anti-authoritarian streak. I'm a big sci-fi/fantasy fan and I love absurd humour, dark humour, and satire. I love sensuality and knowledge and good story-telling. Dungeons & Dragons is one of my favourite creative outlets whether as a player or DMing in my own campaign setting.

I took the scenic route to a BA with a major in English and almost-minors in Poli Sci, History and Psychology. In fairness to my less flattering qualities, though, my passionate streak lends itself to a bit of a temper; I'm a little crass; I can be opinionated and stubborn— arrogant and condescending according to some people. For a long time empathizing with other people didn't seem to come very naturally to me-- I find people irrational, confusing, sometimes really goddamned annoying-- and I'd compensate by trying to understand them intellectually. My Buddhist study has helped with those issues, but I'm still pretty irritable sometimes, and I'm definitely given to 'salty' language. Like a mash-up of Sheldon Cooper, Eeyore, and Lewis Black, but working on the antisocial bits.

I'm also polyamorous-at-heart; I've been with my partner, John, since ~2003 and for about four years we had another partner together. After the first year and a half or so he moved away for work though, and despite trying to maintain it long-distance, he eventually broke up with us. So John and I are back to being a couple, but I know now what I long suspected-- that I've got ample space for more than one bilateral romantic relationship at a time. Whether that will ever *mean* anything while I'm with John, though, I don't know; I don't think he's willing to try that again. I don't know that he and I ever really returned to our baseline, even.

I'm a little awkward socially-- I try to be decent and direct, and I’m more sensitive than people take me for, but I'm very much an introvert. Whether others would agree or not, I don't know, but I don't think of myself as 'fun.' And I tend to assume that other people won't find me fun, so to avoid embarrassment I don't really try to be. When I meet new people I'm content to talk, but eventually I get bored of the sound of my own voice and really don't know what to do. Just so people know what to expect.

PHILOSOPHY

Deep down, everybody just wants to be happy. We all start out basically good, and in a world of dinged-up, confused, deluded and grasping people-- some of them with distorted conceptions of what "happiness" is deranging their actions toward others-- it can be hard to remember and really believe that we all started out basically good and that we all just want to be happy.

Remembering and believing that is what I'm working on, but I also grasp at "fixing" confusion and delusions by way of argumentation-- I'd love if if I could "talk the world 'better.'" I watch it and I listen, though, and I see a lot of 'imperfection'-- a lot of ignorance and deception and injustice-- and I tend to get frustrated and end up cussing a fair bit. But I still think watching and listening and "facing it" is important, so, I try to do that.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I first heard about CS through my roommate-landlord at "the 476" from May '07-Aug '08, and met a lot of cool surfers during my year at his place. After 9 years in a 4th floor apartment with assorted roommates, I'm now in a smaller place with John and a vacant bedroom that was my mom’s before she died. Until it’s rented out we can put couchsurfers there if they don’t find it too creepy.

Our place isn't the Ritz, and a variety of schedules means we can't always receive people even if we'd like to, but we try to make the CSers we do host feel welcome. That said, the accommodations comprise a maybe-a-little-haunted bedroom, or the living room couch (or air mattress if you prefer) is in the fairly high-traffic living room, so if you require a lot of privacy or sensory deprivation to settle in and sleep we may not be an ideal fit. Or, I mean frankly, if we hit it off *super-duper* well, our bed will fit three from experience, but I’m not treating this as a hookup site, just considering all potentialities.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I haven't traveled as a CSer but we've hosted a bunch of people now and the experience has been like 99% positive. I like to learn a bit about the rest of the world from our passers-through, so that when my quest for global hegemony eventually reaches their homelands, the local traditions won't be *completely* unknown.

Interests

Philosophy, ethics, politics, humanism, sci-fi, trivia, aesthetics, queer studies, music, dancing, sciences, languages, culture, fitness. Really, I'm *curious* about everything. If I could learn everything there is to know-- if I had the time and the memory-- I totally would.

• culture
• humanities
• writing
• human rights
• ethics
• fitness
• running
• meditation
• boating
• politics
• trivia
• board games
• music
• skydiving
• atheism
• anthropology
• emergency services
• history
• languages
• logic
• psychology
• science
• gaming
• science fiction
• sexuality
• kink
• fanfiction
• glbt

Music, Movies, and Books

Favourite movies: Contact, V for Vendetta, Latter Days, Serenity, Battlestar Galactica mini-series, Farscape: the Peacekeeper Wars, Star Trek Wrath of Khan.

Favourite books: The Art of Happiness, The Art of War, Not Always So, Come Out Fighting, God's Politics, The Prophet.

Favourite musicians: Matthew Good, Sarah McLachlan, Bear McCreary, Pink, Bif Naked, lots more.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Learning to just sit and breathe. It can be distressing to realize how long you went without such a basic skill, and to realize how many others could be benefiting from it but aren't.

Far more exciting, though-- I love skydiving. I've had three tandem jumps and one instructor-assisted solo jump as part of training for solo certification, and it's something I want to continue with. Frankly it's how I wish I could spend most of my free time, so much so that I'm always a little bummed out whenever I'm on the ground instead of in free fall.

Teach, Learn, Share

I can teach you to meditate and the odds are good that I could expand your vocabulary a bit... whether you'll find 'em useful or not is up to you. Besides that, I like discussing a wide range of things, but-- full disclosure-- unless people actively engage me, I tend to do my own introverted, habitual thing and allow them to do the same. I trust others to tell me what they need, and if they don't say anything I tend to assume that, like me, they need very little.

Countries I’ve Visited

Canada

Countries I’ve Lived In

Canada

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