Writing From Inside It
Essays, reading notes, and the slow observations I’ve gathered over four years of living in the middle of a transition, I still haven’t finished.
This isn’t a place for answers or for stories about having figured things out.
I haven’t figured it out. For four years now, since I first arrived in Kingston, Ontario in 2021, I’ve been somewhere in the middle of a transition that keeps unfolding. I started as an international student and now I’m here on a temporary work permit. Most days I work as a commercial cleaner. I help organize peer gatherings for newcomers. I read books I never picked up for pleasure, just to steady myself.
This is where I try to lay out what I’m learning, slowly and imperfectly, from inside the experience itself.
What you will find here:
Essays on transition, migration, and the long in-between that nobody has a program for. Reading notes from the books that helped me — and why they helped when they did. Observations about what goes unspoken in newcomer spaces, in workplaces, in the systems that are supposed to support people like me. Thinking behind the Newcomer Transition Briefing — the 10-issue PDF series I built because I needed it and could not find it anywhere else.
What you will not find here:
You won’t find advice here, or neat arrival stories, or resilience and adaptability dressed up as a skill. I’m not interested in performing gratitude for conditions I never chose.
Stay with the work as it unfolds
I try to write about parts of life most people feel but rarely find words for: the long, uncertain middle of transition, the quiet pressure beneath work, and the systems shaping both, even when we are not looking.
This is where I continue to follow the threads that started with the Newcomer Transition Briefing and have grown from it.
It is not really about giving updates, nor is it advice. It is just the work, as it keeps unfolding.