I moved from London, Ontario to Vancouver, British Columbia a little over a year ago to join Perch as the Sr. UX Designer. In that time, I have designed 3 versions of the app¹, watched us grow from a team of 4 to a team of 8, and been part making what I believe is a new beginning in the way we experience communication.

The past 16 months have been amazing, but like all good things my time at Perch is coming to an end.² Two weeks have gone by since I handed in my resignation, and my last day will be September 27.

At the end of the month I will be driving back to Ontario to spend time with my mom who has been battling cancer for some time now. My friend Ed will be joining me for the ride, my first time across Canada.

What will I be doing when I get back to Ontario? Good question, but not one I can answer at this time. What I can tell you is that it won’t be anything I’ve done before.

I have two special announcements for those in the Vancouver area. First, I’m having a party at my place Friday night. I know this is the Internet, but I still think you should come. Email me for the time and location.

Second, because my little Mazda 3 Sport can’t tow a trailer, I need to sell my furniture. There’s a bed, a sofa bed, and a patio couch listed on Craigslist that, I think, would look so good in your place.

I did not expect I would leave Vancouver so soon. I’m really going to miss working with Danny, Steve, Ian, Lance, Adam, Edward, and Pete. I’m really going to miss the amazing friends I’ve made. I’m really going to miss the sushi.

But, don’t fret. I’ll be back to visit soon.

※ Permalink for “Goodbye, Vancouver” published on date_to_rfc822

I bought this shirt when I was fat. It was too small for me, but I couldn’t put it back on the rack. At the time I was toying around with the Paleo diet, and thought I’d be able to wear it in a few short months. I didn’t stick with the diet at the time, so the shirt remained in a box in my storage locker.

My in-suite washing machine had been broken for a few weeks, and I was running out of clean tees.¹ I hadn’t thought about it in almost a year, but as I pulled the green article out of the box my eyes widened with excitement.

I might be small enough to fit into this thing.

I put it on, and immediately felt the warmth of self confidence emanating from my chest.

It’s the moustache that does it for me.

---

Episode 30 of my podcast, Hundred Down, is up. I drop a big announcement a few minutes in, about which I’ll have more to say here in the next a week or so.

※ Permalink for “Juggernaut Joe’s 40th Jubilee” published on date_to_rfc822

Though it is technically a 3.0 release, in our hearts it’s our true 1.0. This is just the beginning of a vision we’ve been running towards since day one.

There are a non-trivial number of video communication apps in the wild, each with their own user experience wrapped around a basic concept: connecting people over distances of any size through video. The experience that we’ve created was built with the same goal, applied to a new context, resulting in a new experience. I’m really excited to see which of our ideas work, learn from the ones that don’t, and discover new problems and opportunities along the way.

If you have remote workers on your team, if your company works from multiple locations, or if your office would benefit an easier method of connecting two spaces within the office, I would love for you to give Perch a try. If you work from an office and have kids at home, try setting up one Perch Portal at your desk and another in your kitchen. I think you might like it.

Of course, I’m not a very good sales guy, so I’ll leave you with someone who is.

Download Perch for free on the App Store

※ Permalink for “Perch in the App Store” published on date_to_rfc822

Every week I listen to the latest episode before posting it to Hundred Down. Admittedly, our show isn’t particularly professional, but I do care that what is said on the show is—at the very least—tasteful.

A week ago, the guys and I recorded one of the most revealing episodes we’ve ever done. After recording it, I felt an intense inner pressure to protect myself from what was said. I didn’t want to hear it again. I didn’t want anyone else to hear it, either.

Usually when I talk about feeling down or being alone, I do so in a light-hearted way. Most of the time I feel pretty ok, and making a joke out of personal misery helps make it not seem so, well, miserable.

It took me an entire week to finally strike up the courage to listen to what we had recorded. But as I sat and listened to a guy break down, I felt comforted. It wasn’t that I looked down on the guy, but rather that I felt I wasn’t alone.

Now, of course I realized that this guy speaking to me through my earbuds was me, but the experience reminded me of two very important truths.

First: having some form of documentation of your pain to look back on allows you to realize that in life you are always moving forward. How you feel in any particular moment does not determine how you will feel in the future. As I sit here writing this today I feel so content, so genuinely happy, that I don’t recognize myself from even a week ago.

Second: other people in this world feel the same pain, sadness, loneliness, and fear that I have felt, and one of the best gifts I can give them is the comfort that they, too, aren’t alone in all of this.

To give you a sense of how strongly I agonized over this: I reached out to a few people I admire and asked what they felt about publishing something that was personally revealing for public consumption. The responses I got were both helpful and mixed. Were I to follow some of the advice I received I would not be writing this down and I would not be publishing the episode.

But as I listened again to the end of the show, I couldn’t help but wonder whether right in that moment, even if completely subconsciously, I could foresee the internal struggle I would face:

What I want to make clear is that I know I’m going to get into a funk again. I’m going to get into this place where it’s dark, and it’s gloomy. But in the meantime, I want to focus all of this time and all of this energy into putting together a survival kit.

This episode and the 27 that came before and the two or three dozen that come after will form the foundation of that survival kit. And my hope is that anyone who may be struggling with their own weight and/or self-image issues might find it a helpful tool in their kits, too.

※ Permalink for “I need a survival kit” published on date_to_rfc822

Losing weight is a mind fuck.

About four years ago I lost sixty pounds. Starting at 275 lb, I ran, lifted, pressed, pushed, pulled, fought, and calorie-restricted my way to 215 lb. It was tough. I was dedicated.

I had a really hot girlfriend helping me out.

Once that fell apart, I let myself go. As one friend-of-a-friend put it, I was putting on my shield. In a matter of months I gained back those sixty pounds, and then a few more just in case.

For three years I lived my life in that shield. I clung to it. It defended me. I embraced it. It saved me.¹

On January 2, 2013, I started taking off the shield. On January 14, I started telling my story and documenting it.

In nearly 8 whole months of losing weight professionally², I have discovered one fascinating benefit to be the ability to examine just how long it’s taking me. I have never kept good records, but recording the show has resulted in a trail of crumbs that allow me to look back on my journey. Where in the past I didn’t have the information to analyze, now the podcast has become a deep cove of revealing thoughts and stories and statistics about myself.³

Through this lens I have come to a harsh discovery: I’m in a rut.

---

By June 14, 2013, I lost 52 lb. I remember exactly how I felt because I can hear it.

It took me 164 days to lose 52 lb. That works out to 3.15 days per pound. It has been 66 days since I reached the 52 lb mark. In 66 days, I have lost somewhere close to 20 lb. Unfortunately, these have been the same three or four pounds lost and gained and lost and gained over and over again.

This morning I weighed myself and the scale read 234.9 lb. That means that in 66 days all I have accomplished is less than one pound per month. That’s 33 days per pound.

What the fuck have I been doing?

Even by listening to a few small snippets of the past few episodes of the show, it’s obvious I’m not doing well. I’m struggling to get over whatever’s holding me back. I’m making excuses for laziness. I’m pushing back against the system — no — the friends I’ve asked to help me out.

It’s a repeating pattern in my life, and one of the main reasons I don’t like asking for help.

I’m an addict. Addicts hurt the ones who try to help.

Watch any episode of Intervention, and you’ll see just what addiction does to someone. It makes them violent against those who love them. It turns angels into demons, saints into sinners, beauties into beasts.

And I’m one of them. It’s embarrassing to admit it, certainly even more in a place so public, but my hope is perhaps that by admitting it I can begin to heal.

I don’t want to give the impression that I’m in some dire need of professional help. I have not stolen, or physically hurt anyone. There are certainly people whose addition has worn them down to the point where they are incapable of healing on their own. I am not one of them, though my heart breaks for them.

I have the mental, physical, financial, and social capacity to fix this. But, again, I can’t do it on my own.

So there it is. Getting from 50 to 60 lb has been hard. Hell, I’m still not really there. And there’s a hell of a long road after that.

But as I take a few steps back, giving myself space to accelerate in order to push beyond my own inadequacies in an attempt to achieve something I know I can achieve,⁴ I’m asking that perhaps, just maybe, you might come alongside and give me a bit of a boost.

Just, try to keep your hands off my bum.

※ Permalink for “The hardest ten” published on date_to_rfc822

Growing up, we all had heroes. Mine? Superman and Batman, Wayne Gretzky and Scott Stevens, Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Undertaker.

One of my more recent heroes — who, unlike Superman, met me for coffee one day — is Adam Lisagor. If you don’t know who Adam is, you’re probably not as big of a tech/design/film geek as me. Which, I get. But still…

A few years ago, Adam made a video. That video led to more videos, and now Adam and his friends make their living making videos. They make videos for big companies, little companies, and every size company in between. Adam’s videos are fun, simple, and do a fantastic job telling the story of the products they’re sharing.

A few months ago, the team at Perch made a big product decision that would mean a complete redesign of our app. What we were making was completely new and completely different from what we had done before. As we began to think about how we would tell this new story, one name instantly came to mind.

I’m so proud to finally share the fruits of our — let’s be honest, Adam and his team’s — labour.

Without further adieu, Meet Perch:

This video is the product of some of the most talented individuals I’ve ever had the opportunity to work with. While I didn’t have a chance to meet everyone involved, the few I did interact with directly were incredible. Adam, Claude, and Shadie, you are all fantastic at what you do.

My thanks to everyone who was involved. You were all awesome.

Producer
Greg Kindra

Production Designer
Ali Rubinfeld

Director of Photography
Lowell A Meyer

Narrator
Ben Hicks

Sylvia
Candida Rodriguez

Mitch
Danny Cohen

Clark
Christopher Livingston

Editor
Daniel Ainsworth

Concept
Danny Cohen

Creative Director
Adam Lisagor

Head of Production
Shadie Elnashai

Director
Claude Zeins

※ Permalink for “Working with heroes” published on date_to_rfc822

This past weekend, I flew back to Ontario for the second time in as many weeks to celebrate the marriage of my baby bro and his beautiful fiancé. Rob and Holli-Ann met when he was posted at Base Borden in the summer of 2010. He had just finished basic training and was starting his training as a supply tech, when he found himself working alongside a beautiful civilian worker. The two of them took a trip to her family’s home province of Newfoundland, and have been together ever since.

The event was made extra special by the presence of my mom. She has been low on energy the last few weeks due to radiation and chemo therapy treatments, but managed to not only attend the wedding but to stay out for the entire duration of the reception. I may have even caught her sipping a few sips of wine during the toasts. Her dance with my brother brought both my sister and I to tears.

I don’t do well at events like this, because I’m intimately involved and want to make sure everything goes perfectly. Not only was I the best man, but also the MC for the reception and a jack-of-all-trades prior to the event. It took a while—and perhaps a few bottles of wine—but I somehow I eventually made the audience made up of close friends and family laugh. Tough crowd.

Overall, the wedding was fantastic. I’m so proud of you, Rob. And Holli-Ann, remember my advice from my speech: let him win once in a while.

※ Permalink for “Rob & Holli-Ann” published on date_to_rfc822

Wow, what a whirlwind the last two weeks have been. I’m feeling incredibly stressed and anxious about several things going on in my life at the moment, but in the last two days I’m starting to come up out of the fog and into the sun. It’s a lot more clear up here.

Anyway, in the midst of all this madness, I did have the opportunity to record two episodes of the Hundred Down podcast. Last week, the guys and I talked about, well, pretty much everything I’m either doing wrong or not doing at all.

This week, however, was a super special week. Not only was I joined by my two good friends Bill and Ed, but we also had a very special guest. I already spoiled the surprise on Twitter, so I won’t ruin it for you. Have a listen; I think you’ll enjoy it :)

※ Permalink for “Hundred Down Times Two” published on date_to_rfc822

※ Permalink for “Tracks” published on date_to_rfc822

My friend James Shelley and I have known each other for nearly 10 years now. I first met James when he was a youth pastor at a local church I occasionally attended, but our friendship grew playing squash at ungodly hours in the morning. James is one of the brightest, most thoughtful people I know. While practically every word he says carries more weight than anything I could muster up in a week, it’s his willingness to listen to the ideas of others that truly inspires me.

I’ve linked to the Caesura Letters—James’s daily devotional for people who don’t read devotionals—before, but today I’m writing about the project because of some very exciting news. As of today, you can now receive the daily issue in your RSS reader instead of just your email inbox.

A few months ago, I had set up a rule in Gmail to forward all of my Caesura Letters to Instapaper, which I found to be a much better reading environment for the content than an inbox. However, lately I haven’t been keeping up with it because I wasn’t receiving the daily reminders in my email.

I check my RSS feeds multiple times a day, and while I don’t read everything at once, I do tend to go back and read articles I’ve saved at a later date. Having the Caesura Letters in my RSS reader will definitely make reading them on a daily basis much easier.

Of course, that may not be the best system for you. If you’d prefer to read the Caesura Letters in another format, there are plenty of choices:

1. Obviously, the RSS Feed
2. The tried-and-true daily email
3. A new weekly digest email
4. A quarterly e-book, and for those who still love that old musty smell,
5. A quarterly paperback book

My congrats to James and the team behind Caesura Letters for a great update to an awesome project. If you haven’t picked up on it already, I really think you should be reading it.

※ Permalink for “You should be reading this” published on date_to_rfc822