'Oregon Trail' Gen X Nerd

  The soundtrack in the back of my head by Jen Davies, nerd July 8, 2026 Today's blog has a soundtrack! It isn't necessary though. https://youtu.be/cD7MuSTu7ss Ludovico Einaudi: Fox Tracks (Day 3) I have only experienced life in two ways: long periods of time when music is essential to existing day to day, and long periods when my head is too full of ideas to accommodate much music in there. I'm currently in a strange period when I seem to be able to handle both: I'm not as quick to push the ideas out into the world, but I'm still able to do it and make space for music. In fact, with music playing I find it a little easier to sit at my desk (a constant problem: making myself sit down and DO it, so you can imagine how difficult writing my doctoral thesis was). My relationship with music began early, because both my parents loved it and played it pretty much daily. I also grew up in the 1980s and had the benefits of children's television with incredible music, es...

Image from https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/61719320 Making friends as an adult: "THAT one" by Jen Davies, nerd July 1, 2026 Making friends as an adult is a lot harder than making friends as a child. As a child in school, there are typically two dozen kids in a class (and more in the overall school) who might be candidates, and you spend 6 or 7 hours every day with them, forced to interact in class and at recess and on the bus. Kids in the neighbourhood you live in are all often versed in the same set of 5 or 10 games (jump rope, Tag, or Minecraft), so they're all candidates for friendship too. As an adult, you never know what someone is "into" - the range gets a lot broader as we get older and we have different life experiences and develop different interests. We get pickier and more set in our ways, too (that's a different topic for another blog post). Our pool of candidates often gets smaller as well: we aren't surrounded by two-dozen or mo...

Image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_drawer Adding to your "junk drawer" by Jen Davies, nerd June 24, 2026 Please let me invite you first to watch Hank Green's video, No Effort is Wasted (25 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgBaU9mmceQ The rest of this blog will make a lot more sense. As a career counsellor I've seen a lot of people who are concerned about the outcome of a particular effort. If I do X, will I get Y? Like, if I take on this project at work, will my boss give me a raise? I see a similar concern in the Save #TheHuntforBenSolo fan campaign. If we do Z can we be sure to get a Ben Solo movie? And the answer to both of those questions is unsatisfying. As wise scientist and negotiator Ben Franklin gets credit for telling us, the only guarantees in life are death and taxes. We can rarely be 100% certain of the outcome of a social behaviour because people are complex. Occasionally someone will then express the idea that maybe they shouldn...

Image from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093779/ The movies we have obsessed over June 10, 2026 by Jen Davies, nerd Last week I hosted a Watch Party for the #TheHuntForBenSolo fan campaign, and I noted that I have now seen the featured film - 65 - 8 or 9 times now, and that's a lot for me. I rarely revisit movies or TV shows. Something has to really grip me to get me to rewatch.  And it got me wondering about the movies I have obsessed over. Which movies have YOU obsessed over? Do you think it says anything about us? Childhood... The Princess Bride Willow SW Ep456 things with puppets I cannot remember a time when I did not know Star Wars (original trilogy). My father showed it to me as soon as he thought I could handle it, and I know I saw all three movies in the first home that I can remember. We moved from there when I was 7, so I know I had seen all three by that age. Likely thanks to Frank Oz's Yoda, I loved rewatching The Muppet Show and Fraggle Rock for years, which had...

Image from https://freesvg.org/shuttermonkey-movie-clapperboard Movies I'm glad I saw, but I won't rewatch by Jen Davies, nerd June 17, 2026 Last week I wrote about films I've seen a LOT . This week, here are films I've seen only once (and I'm glad I did even though I never want to see them again). I don't think I'm the only one who has only so-much tolerance for films with particular kinds of content. For me, I don't do high levels of violence well (especially not horror movie-type gore - like, the whole Saw series seems like just an ongoing repetition and I don't understand why there is more than one). I can tolerate some sex in a movie (brief scenes that have a story purpose). I don't care either way if there is a romantic plot, and I actively avoid romcoms. And yet I try to avoid spoilers before seeing movies that I know I'm interested in, so certainly I'm exposed to all of those things regularly. Here are a few films that I saw, whic...

  Image from https://tenor.com/view/simpsons-flirting-do-you-like-stuff-walking-gif-16413189 Interviewing and the joy of meeting new people June 3, 2026 by Jen Davies, nerd There was no blog last week - it was just a heck of a week! I had a choir concert to perform in (lots of rehearsals), I taught, and then I had to get on an airplane to a conference where I presented a workshop with two beloved colleagues. A heck of a week, made worthwhile by the fantastic people I got to spend time with. As a counsellor, I interview people all day. That's actually a technical term that we use to describe the process and skills we use to collect a client's story. Unlike a media interview, a counselling interview aims to help a client look at their situation in new and different ways with questions and helpful paraphrases. With new and different understanding of their situations, clients can make informed decisions about their day to day thoughts and behaviour. It's a great career for me, ...

  Image from https://www.youtube.com/@ColbertLateShow Spring cleaning with Stephen Colbert May 20, 2026 by Jen Davies, nerd It's Spring Cleaning season, so I've been rearranging my basement and tidying my house. Winter jacket goes to the back of the closet, spring jackets come forward... putting winter boots away so sandals are easier to reach. My back hurts from all the bending and lifting. All those signs of spring. And throughout, I'm sad because I don't know how I'm going to consume my US news after this week. Stephen Colbert has "pre-chewed" the US news for me since back on the Daily Show in the late 1990s I guess? And then on his own show, the Colbert Report. And then he took over the Late Show from Dave Letterman over a decade ago. At times, the news from the USA has been so hard to process directly: the violence (shootings, hatred), the wars and violence abroad, and lack of action on essential social issues (poverty, addiction).  Having all that to...

Ben Solo Lives (at my house): A Journey of Acceptance by Jen Davies, nerd May 13, 2026 My blog is late this week because it's been a heck of a busy week! And it started with a jump scare by Ben, my houseguest since mid-March when I brought him home from Toronto Comicon. As you can imagine, my spouse was a little concerned to have a lifesize cutout of an artistic rendition of Ben Solo / Adam Driver around the house. He is confident in his masculinity so I don't think it was that he felt like the piece of art was a threat. It's just... it looks like a person! And it's flat but the base is large enough that it doesn't fit conveniently in a closet, so Ben has been floating around the house for a while. The jump scares started with me, setting it up in places I thought spouse might find. I was a bad guesser, it would be days and days before spouse found him. But recently, spouse has deigned to touch the Ben Solo cutout, and now Ben surprises me all over the place. And I ...

Displaying my fandoms by Jen Davies, nerd May 6, 2026 Happy May the Fourth (belated)! I've worked in roles where displaying my nerd side hasn't always been possible. For instance, my primary profession is counsellor, which means that as a rule I don't share a lot about myself at all! Until recently I worked as a middle-manager in colleges and universities which also meant that a significant amount of "professionalism" (suit jackets, meetings with agendas, and staying on track) were required for relationship maintenance both inside and outside the institution. And more recently as a professor I can be a little free-er, but I also have to stay on-topic in class and as such there isn't always room for nerdiness (though I do my best to bring it in once or twice each term). But my car is my own, and while I used to eschew bumper stickers, I decided when I got a new (to me) vehicle last year that I would decorate the heck out of the rear end. Nobody can ...

  Managing wild thoughts: "I'll deal with it" by Jen Davies, nerd April 29, 2026 I'm waiting for my family doctor's office to open while I write this blog post today. I have a minor issue and I wasn't able to deal with it independently, so now I have to get a prescription. Blah. I have nothing against health care practitioners, I just despise the hurry-up-and-wait that goes on when it comes to getting help. In my last blog I talked about how I make myself busy, and sitting in waiting rooms is not conducive to being busy (but I will be able to embrace boredom for a while). While waiting on hold to get some interim medical advice (wait for family doctor's office, or go to emergency service), my imagination ran a little wild through all the symptoms and what they could possibly mean. As I passed through more unlikely but scarier possibilities (never Google your symptoms - it always ends with cancer), and my thoughts went a little "wild",...

  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...

Photo from https://www.hockeycanada.ca/en-ca/news/canadian-rosters-named-for-2025-wjac The joy of junior hockey: Watching people grow by Jen Davies, nerd March 9, 2026 I recently moved from a big city to a small town, and my spouse and I bought season tickets to the local junior hockey team (ages 16-20). They are an occasional feeder to the bigger hockey leagues, and they are just of an age where they are allowed to hit each other. Of course fighting is never technically allowed however it's also at this stage that players understand they will enforce on-ice courtesy of the referees aren't calling violations. It's exciting, mostly clean hockey. I've been loving it. We bought season tickets because we know from experience that we are the kind of people who will just sit at home and scroll on our phones if we don't have an event of some kind. So we have "standing dates" with friends, and we host a lot of board game nights. If we didn't buy the whole seas...

Photo from IMDB The subtlety of alcohol addiction: Dramatic treatments by Jen Davies, nerd March 4, 2026 Note: Minor spoilers here for movies Father Mother Sister Brother, Babylon 5 TV series, and  Last week I had the opportunity to finally see Jim Jarmusch's latest movie, FMSB, now that it's streaming. It is excellent. It's a collection of three stories. I ended up watching it twice in order to confirm something I thought I had seen in the Father story, especially after seeing all three stories. As with other Jarmusch movies, so much of what's good about them is in what isn't spoken about.  Spoilers start here! Each of the stories deals with those things that families just don't talk about, and in each one more than one person was harbouring something unspoken. In the Father story I had a pretty strong suspicion, and on rewatch I found what I had missed to confirm that the son, played by Adam Driver, is dealing with alcoholism. (Watch with headphones if you...

Science is observation: What I learned while walking my dog  by Jen Davies, nerd  Feb 25, 2026   About a year and a half ago my spouse and I adopted a dog for the first time. She is a black lab and boxer mix, so she wants to be everyone's friend but you have to know she's in charge. We've had cats, but this was the first dog, and walking her daily has led to some observations on my part. And as a social scientist, I realize there are lessons I can learn from my dog.  Lots I can't see  Sometimes my dog stops to sniff nothing, just spots on the road or in people's yards, and there is absolutely nothing that my eyes can see that could have drawn her attention. Clearly there's something there (probably another dog's pee from the day before), but I can't detect it. And that reminds me that human senses are so very limited: we only see a segment of the light spectrum, our noses are pretty good but we miss a lot compared to molecules that are available in the...