'Oregon Trail' Gen X Nerd

  Image from https://www.theguardian.com/global/2020/may/03/why-its-good-to-be-bored Doing too many things and creativity by Jen Davies, nerd April 22, 2026 One of the challenges of having a head that just won't stop thinking is that I end up doing too many things. I have a role as a professor for a small Canadian university (which is a LOT on its own, including developing and teaching 1-2 classes per term as well as moving forward a research agenda); I work a few hours every week as a psychotherapist and career counsellor to keep my skills sharp; and I try to have some fun including singing in a local choir and engaging with the people at savebensolo.com . This is one of the reasons that I started this blog! I had been thinking about it for some time before I decided to launch it. I used to blog about career development (ie, work), but I'd been feeling like I wanted an outlet for all the other things I was thinking about. And here we are. Coming back to doing too many things....

  There is no try: On being the better person by Jen Davies, nerd April 15, 2026 Growing up a Star Wars kid, I learned a lot from Master Yoda. What I always took away from the famous "Do or do not - there is no try" lesson was that if I really want whatever I'm doing to succeed I should focus and commit to it fully. Half-hearted investments of effort are not going to get the desired results. It can be really hard to commit to being the better person. In this description I include behaviour and attitudes like: choosing to believe that other people are doing their current best, whatever they're doing. Helping people to improve what they're doing, so next time their best is even better, even when I don't feel like helping. Choosing to offer kindness and grace even in situations where someone has clearly effed something up. What makes it hard to be the better person is that there are other people who seem to choose to be the worst  person, and do the opposite: ass...

Photo from a recent Talent Show I attended, hosted by the local Pride committee. Grateful for Hail Mary: On choosing to be visible by Jen Davies, nerd A lot about identity is visible, for example in skintone or in religious symbols we might wear. Two identities I hold, asexuality and nerd, are only visible when I choose to share them, which is a real privilege for me. I can decide when and where to bring them into the space I'm in. And I've decided over the last year or two that I wanted to make them more visible. I only realized a few years ago that I was ace. I grew up in places and at a time when that identity wasn't recognized as part of the spectrum of sexual identity, though in hindsight it sure explains a lot about why I preferred to hang around young men who were gay! Low risk of being hit on. For the record, I have probably ended up demisexual because I have been in a happily committed relationship with my spouse for 20+ years. And this is another privi...

  Rage of Thrones, by Axis of Awesome Video by Axis of Awesome is rude, but truly excellent. It has nothing to do with the blog topic, I just wanted to share it. Photo April 2, 2026 - no joke "Winter is coming" - or feels like it never left by Jen Davies, nerd April 1, 2026 (but without jokes) Those of us who live in snow-prone climates always get a giggle out of the infamous Game of Thrones motto for House Stark: "Winter is coming."  No kidding. It's always coming. And this year in my particular part of the world, it feels like last winter (2024-25) never left because we had such a short summer. It was too cold to plant delicate flowers in outdoor gardens until about July 1 last year! In addition, a bad forest fire year kept us indoors when the air quality was poor. And October was cold, so we only had about 3 months to enjoy the outdoors without a jacket on, whereas in some years we get 4 or even 5 months of skipping the extra layers of clothing. T...

  25 years later: Attending another convention by Jen Davies, nerd March 25, 2026 So, last week I attended my first fan convention in 25 years. I went with a colleague from the savebensolo.com fan campaign - and I use the term "colleague" on purpose because the entire approach to the convention was project managed by yours truly in a highly collaborative manner (since we're all volunteers), with the intention that it would appear professional-like.  We had been planning to attend Toronto Comicon 2026 since late November. Our plan was to bring a lifesize piece of art and invite people to take a photo with Ben Solo. Incredible artist Altocello (altocello.com) had agreed to add a bottom-half to the beautiful piece of art that she had already created for the fan campaign website. We reached out to the company that runs the convention ahead of time and asked if there were any concerns about us bringing the lifesize cutout of Ben. We never did get a response, though that was ex...

  Image from Star Wars UK: https://x.com/StarWarsUK/status/1706232072799420536 Soft and powerful: Why I love my spouse (and Ben Solo) by Jen Davies, nerd March 18, 2026 This expression, “soft and powerful”, is something I pulled out of this video by TheVomcharTV: https://youtu.be/osT8u9i4d0c (start around 50” - it’s quoted in the last 3 minutes of the video). It came originally from Alina Corbett’s blog titled “Let Him Live” ( https://alinacorbett.substack.com/p/let-him-live ), which I had read but that word-pairing had not stood out before. It’s a blog post expressing frustration over the cancellation of a post-sequels Star Wars film, The Hunt for Ben Solo, after several years of work and even some pre-production work at Lucasfilm. After a thoughtful discussion on an idea called The Wounded Masculine (and I think you could substitute the pop culture idea of Toxic Masculinity, which is not at all the same, but her argument still works), she argues, “ The healing of the mascul...