As I write this, I’m going on three weeks since my OG Facebook account was closed down.

I say “OG” because I was one of the earlier adopters of the platform back in 2006, when it was still only open to university students (in fact, my original login is my campus email address).

It seems like the dumbest, most inconsequential thing to dwell on at this time, especially given my (current) limited mental bandwidth to deal with things like paying rent during a pandemic as a freelancer, the pandemic itself, the very real threat of authoritarian takeover Stateside (being next…

Facebook has me unable to post, comment, like other posts, or even use Messenger.

As such, I am shifting my usual status updates to Medium.

Here’s the first one. Not gonna lie to you, friends…this sucks.

That is all.

Jody Aberdeen is an author, ghostwriter, podcaster, foodie, and an early adopter of Facebook from 14 years ago who had his account arbitrarily shut down for being in a group that ran afoul of the Terms of Service. You can follow his griping here for as long as he feels like griping. Jody lives in Dundas, a reluctant subsidiary of Hamilton, in Ontario, Canada.

Welp…as I write this, it’s the night before the first Monday back after New Years, and like many of you, I’m having mixed feelings about it.

Mind you, I recognize my privileges as a fairly successful-to-date ghostwriter: I set my own hours, serve individual clients in a collaborative fashion rather than a hierarchical corporate command chain, and never have to put on pants or drive anywhere to get to work (though as we approach a year into the COVID-19 Pandemic, those benefits are no longer the exclusive domain of the freelance life).

Still, whatever December holidays you celebrate, it’s likely…

• SPOILERS BELOW FOR THOSE WHO HAVEN’T SEEN THE SEASON TWO FINALE OF THE MANDALORIAN. THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING*

Like many of you, I just knew it when I saw it.

The payoff was long in coming. This was no ass-pull on the part of the writers, no deus ex machina contrivances here. The breadcrumbs had been masterfully dropped in front of our faces throughout the season. There was a masterful organic setup for what was about to happen.

Our heroes had taken the ship, but still found themselves cornered against an enemy that we had just seen to be…

Almost normal.

That’s what this summer feels like where I live here in Hamilton, Ontario.

The last time I wrote about COVID was in early May, 2020. Now, as then, I feel that documenting my anecdotal experience of life in a pandemic would be useful to someone down the road, amateur and professional historians alike.

But now, I’m feeling less interested in documenting events. Instead, my attention is on things closer to home. In fact, my attention is on home.

There’s a vibe in the air similar to 2016, like the whole works is about to collapse under its own…

Oscar Wilde said “patriotism is the virtue of the vicious”.

On Canada Day, Past Jody wouldn’t stand for that kind of talk.

Present Day Jody, on the other hand, says “it’s complicated”.

Recently, I told some (younger) friends that I was moving to part of town that has a reputation for being rather dull.

The response? “That’s where people go to get old and die, Jody.” (Or words to that effect).

There’s a trope in North American popular culture: youthful exuberance, if not impudence. …

This is a meander in two parts, each separated by a few weeks.

The sun rises earlier now, and sets later, but it’s still cold outside. And quiet.

Silent spring nights. Even as everything else about this pandemic kicks my amygdala into overdrive, I’m digging the quiet dark.

I took a walk with my dog outside a short while before writing this sentence, just around my townhouse complex. You could hear the breeze blowing through the budding trees, a distant din of cars, but not much else. …

There’s an uneasy calm in the air that I’m only now starting to experience as a special flavour of generalized anxiety.

It’s as if I was expecting this, or something like this, to happen sooner or later.

An interruption of our regularly scheduled programming of daily commutes and normal commerce. A break in the carbonifying routine of global capitalism.

The sub-category of spiritual manifesting that I follow, reality transurfing, says that the dominance of the COVID-19 pandemic over our awareness is one form of what’s called a “pendulum”, an energy form created from human attention that becomes its own semi-sentient…