How March went in a nutshell
Without a doubt, March 2026 is the busiest month I've had since I got sick in late 2024.❄︎ While I'm... so very exhausted as a result, I'm hanging in there and also really hoping my body is finally cooperating with me enough that I can get back to something resembling a life.
Taking it one day at a time, constantly fine-tuning my medications to try and manage the endometriosis-related nonsense, the broken stomach related nonsense as well as my very fun chronic migraine disorder, as well as working on my physical rehab in the gym, has all been key to my ability to do things, but it's very much a work in progress.
❄︎ (I may one day go in depth here on the blog on exactly what went wrong health-wise for me in 2024/2025, in an attempt to spread awareness about some things, but I'm still far too furious at the moment to do so coherently.)
Community photography 📸
On top of what I've already shared in recent photoblogs (surf the photography tag to find them), I also finally started putting together a portfolio at photos.gersande.com to showcase the outdoor and community photography I've been doing this winter, as well as older photos I'm fond of. It's still very much a work in progress, I have tens of thousands of photos squirrelled away on hard drives I've got to crack open and sort through.
Neige, pluie, soleil, tout le monde dehors pour dénoncer les bombes qui tombent sur les enfants.
On top of the protest photography chronicled here on the blog (taken on the same days I took the above selfies), I was also contacted by members of Avi Lewis' federal NDP leadership campaign to come take photos at an event hosted at UQAM on March 15. I disclaimed that I'm primarily an outdoors photographer (I don't even have a flash that is compatible with my current Nikon at the moment) but the team told me to come anyways. I shared a few photos on Instagram here and on photos.gersande.com, but here are a few more that I liked:
Various community organizers, artists (including Webster, Eve Parker Finley, and Aleksi Campagne, featured above), politicians, and lawyers came to speak to the assembled group at UQAM. And, as of the 29th of March, Avi Lewis is the new leader of the federal NDP.
Reading 📚
I have been mostly reading on the métro or the bus this winter. Both on the migraine front and on the chronic pain front (I'm struggling a lot with staying still for too long) I'm definitely the slowest I've ever been as a reader. Nonetheless, the reading will not be stopped! Here are some books I'm slowly working through:
- Nonfiction: Katie Rose Hejtmanek's Cult of Crossfit (published January 2025) is fascinating and occasionally disturbing. Hejtmanek examines not only the religious aspects of that particular fitness movement but also how it became a tool for American Christfascism and white supremacy.
- Fiction: Gabriela Cabezón Cámara's Les aventures de China Iron (translated in 2020 into French by Guillaume Contré) is an incredible book, and may need its own blog post eventually once I'm done reading it.
- Nonfiction: Black Aces by Julian McKenzie (check out my Instagram post after the Argo book launch back in February) which I am reading a little out of order because there were some big names I wanted to check out first — I started with Sarah Nurse's chapter, and then read P.K. Subban's chapter, and am currently reading through Angela James' bit now. I wanted to finish reading this before blogging about it, but I'm worried I'm taking too long. (I've never been this slow a reader, it's annoying 😅)
- Fiction: I was introduced to Mac Crane's A Sharp Endless Need through Frankie de la Cretaz's OOYL book club, and on top of reading A Sharp Endless Need in one sitting back in January (I can't even remember the last time I stayed up until 4 am finishing a book in a fugue state), I also have been rereading it again more slowly throughout February and March. It mixes women's basketball with weird (heartbreaking) butch gender feelings as well as classic teenage millennial coping strategies (so much drugs and alcohol but I also include all the unspoken ? homosexual romantic yearning). The book is a beautifully written unrequited (?) love story between an athlete and her sport.
(Obligatory affiliate link disclaimer: if you click on the links above to make a purchase from leslibrairies.ca, I will receive a minuscule bit of store credit in return.)
Weightlifting and getting a private training certification 💪
I had to stop studying kinesiology at UQAM in 2025 because my health totally collapsed. My doctor still hasn't really given me the all-clear to try and get back to full-time studies, but I'm going ahead and learning more about anatomy, functional training, weightlifting, and chronic illness on my own time.
Because I have (h)EDS to contend with on top of endometriosis as well as a bunch of old sporting injuries (thanks past me, I really should have saved my legs and stayed home playing videogames as a teen 😭) I'm currently taking a hypermobility-focused weightlifting class with exercise scientist and former professional powerlifter Annie Short.
I was referred to Short's podcast by a former weightlifting coach of mine, and this episode on the importance of research literacy in the exercise science space was really reassuring — especially after some ... complex ... experiences in the university. The podcast led me to signing up for Short's online course on hypermobile weightlifting, and I've been putting a lot of this knowledge to work in the gym, and so far, so good.
If you've been hearing a lot of stuff about fasciae and wondering how much of it is hype and how much of it is real, check out this episode.
I'm also starting a process to get a private training certification next week, which — chronic health and pain gods willing — should take me until July to achieve. From there, I'm going to look into getting some sort of weightlifting-specific certification, but I think this is already a lot for now.
There aren't a ton of (h)EDS and endometriosis weightlifting coaches out there. If I can, I'm going to become one.
Writing, that glorious elephant in the room
I had a semi-productive January on the writing front — I completely credit my attendance at the Wholehearted Writers virtual retreat for that early winter writing discipline — but I completely stopped writing in February and March.
Part of this is definitely that I don't have a ton of good hours a day where my body will tolerate sitting at a desk, and I've been mostly using desk time for weightlifting homework or watching lectures, or my photography. On days where I'm in too much pain to leave my bed, "desk time" includes when I'm sorting through photos in bed, laptop on my lap.
I'm currently trying to increase my tolerance for sitting down for hours at a time, especially as I've joined a local accountability writing group run by a friend that meets every two weeks and I want to be able to sit for the two hours without needing to pace or leave early because the pain gets so bad. (Which so far has been what happens each time I go 🙃)
I do carry a writing notebook with me everywhere and I jot down my thoughts or bits of dialogue all the time, almost like I'm keeping a laboratory/experiment notebook but for the books I'm working on, and I do find that helpful to keep various writing projects "alive" in my mind every day. I'm also experimenting with writing in my Scrivener projects directly from my phone — as long as I'm walking in a safe area I should be able to walk and write for short periods of time and therefore avoid sitting down or lying down, which is less painful though the multitasking is exhausting. So, en bref, I'm working on the writing discipline and managing all the other factors.
Some other moments in March.
There's a ton of little things I did in March that I haven't written about. I acted as a legal observer in municipal court in the middle of March (and may do so again soon). Thanks to the magic of the internet, I attended several talks and symposiums, including "More Than a Game: The Fight for Gender Equality and Inclusion in Sports," a conference given by the Centre for Feminist Legal Studies and UBC OutLaws (I took pages and pages of notes during that talk, and may use some of those notes to write a post reflecting on the recent IOC ruling).
On a more positive note, I watched a lot of hockey this winter and my team (la Victoire de Montréal) have a really good chance of making the top 3 of the league this year. On days when I can, I often liveblog my thoughts on bsky (and on mastodon too!) using the hashtag #hockeyposting. I've got to decide if I'm archiving those live reacts into blog posts, as I did earlier this year (I did receive some feedback that it was not really interesting to most people, so we'll see.)
So! It's been a busy month. I'm exhausted and bracing myself for April, which will be tough on the migraine front (as temperatures rise, so does atmospheric pressure), but as I wrote above: one moment, one hour, one day at a time.
