It’s been almost a month since I’ve touched this site.
Have I lost interest in ships? No.
Has the shipping season in Oshawa been terrible? Yes.
Am I pissy because it seems like Laprairie is never coming back? Yes.
Am I sick of Marine Traffic being a bunch of ignorant money-grubbing pricks? Yes.
Has the City of Oshawa been a complete and total brainless, useless, obstructionist pain in the ass for no good reason other than wanting to give the appearance of doing something? Yes. Absolutely. This is absolutely the dumbest, stupidest, most clueless municipal government this city (or any city in Ontario) has ever had. And their ignorance and outright stupid policies — especially regarding the pier — have made photography unpleasant and have hindered my ability to take the photos I want to take. EVERY TIME that the “north” end of the pier was open and people were watching ships, we were always being good about social distancing. But the leadership of this town have the corporate brains of a used dog waste bag.
Am I both a little bit pissy and a little discouraged by the ship watching community? Absolutely. I don’t think anybody knows or understands or appreciates how much work it takes to do this. How many hours of my day I spent watching port reports and analyzing ship movements. One day a guy down at the pier said to me “Where do you get your information?” as if he thought that I was just regurgitating what I found somewhere else. It’s more than that. It’s a lot more than that. Add to that the actual technical expertise required to keep this website up and it was a huge (and not entirely free) undertaking that I was just no longer willing to invest the time in with the way I was being treated and the misandry that was being shovelled on my head on certain social media platforms.
I’m really biting my tongue to not link a specific group. It sure isn’t the group it used to be, that’s for sure.
But at the end of the day nobody cares. They are matriarchs of their existence in their little bubble. And I really don’t have any desire to live in that bubble of toxicity. Because the problem with a bubble of toxicity is that eventually you run out of air in the bubble and you die.
But. At the same time. Covid-19 is sucking the life out of the shipping season. And really… the only traffic we get here is the same damn ship over and over and over and over and over with the odd interesting one like Harbour Feature that I completely missed and Algoma Buffalo that I completely missed because they were in-and-out so quickly. As much as I’d love to live in a tent by the pier with a solar panel on the roof it’s just not feasible. Trust me. I have literally seen people who have tried to do that — albeit for different reasons.
This would be a great hobby if I didn’t need the validation of others to succeed.
This is what I wanted to do and I thought maybe I was marginally good at it. But the stars aren’t aligned. I’m not going to be dragged face down through the mud by people with no damn clue.
Look for this pitiful waste of time to be shut down this year.
I quit.
