'Oregon Trail' Gen X Nerd

  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...

Image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu_Mythos I love Alien, but I don't like horror: The thin line between scifi and horror by Jen Davies, nerd Feb 11, 2026 If you asked me, do I like horror? I would tell you that I absolutely do NOT. That said, some of my favourite science fiction films and ALL of my favourite Table Top Role Playing Games (TTRPGs) are often categorized as horror. So let me explain to you why I see properties like Alien (the things that are canon*) and also the modernized work of HP Lovecraft (which reduce the painful racism in the original work) as really excellent science fiction rather than as horror. To begin, let's look at a definition of science fiction. My own internalized version without reference to any other source is: a work of fiction based in a futuristic/alternate and consistent "universe" that leverages real scientific (hard scifi) or pseudo-scientific (science fantasy) explanations for elements of the story that help t...

Im moving my blog to Substack! https://jendaviesgenxnerd.substack.com/

Image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_%28novel%29 Why I'm a lifelong Dune lover (even the Lynch movie) by Jen Davies, nerd Jan 29, 2026 If you’re not familiar or hesitant to get into Dune , let me encourage you to start with the very recent Denis Villeneuve films. They do not follow the book in every detail but in the overall story they’re right on the mark, and they are visually mesmerizing in addition to hosting incredible acting performances. Start there, if you’re just starting. I grew up in a sci-fi loving household, but somehow we had not had a copy of Dune on hand for me to read among all the other books. The sci-fi I had read was heavy on the science, dominated by Asimov and Sagan, before I tripped onto Dune , which became the only book I’ve probably read 5 times. I discovered Dune very much by accident: I was at a garage sale and I spotted a bound book of photos from a movie I’d never heard of (the 1980s Dune ), and Patrick Stewart happened to be in t...

  Image from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/if-you-cant-say-something-nice-dont-say-nothing-at-all--3166662230787516/      If you can't say something nice… and other life lessons from films by Jen Davies, nerd Jan 21, 2026 I realize I’ve learned a lot about living life respectfully and effectively from the movies I watched in my childhood/youth. A lot of these lessons weren’t even from films that turned out to be favourites, but these phrases and the meanings behind them have stuck to me and still affect how I choose to be in the world today. I decided to share them! If you can't say something nice, don't say nothin' at all ( Bambi ) This advice, clearly taught by Thumper’s mother, is guidance I wish would be heeded by folks who feel the need to offer unsolicited opinions on the internet, particularly when those opinions are not informed by lived experience or science. There are few life situations in which being rude is called-for, so it’s often best to keep your opi...