Welcome to the second installment of Books & Reflections, my regular roundup of what I’ve been reading, watching, and reflecting on. This series tracks the ideas shaping my work, my writing, and myself.
📚 Inputs & Influences
Books – Fiction
Arabella. Georgette Heyer, 1949.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Mary Ann Shaffer, 2008.
Books – Non-fiction
Confessions of a Public Speaker. Scott Berkun, 2009.
Dare to Lead: Brave Work, Tough Conversations, Whole Hearts. Brené Brown, 2018.
Decline of the English Murder and Other Essays. George Orwell, 1965.
Essays & Editorials
A Hanging. George Orwell. The Adelphi, 1931.
Why I Write. George Orwell. Gangrel, 1946.
‘Careless People is the Book About Facebook I’ve Wanted for a Decade. Jason Koebler, 404 Media, 2025.
Articles
Meta is Trying to Silence a Former Executive. In an Interview, She Tells BI Why. Pranav Dixit, Business Insider.
BDC VC report issues collective wakeup call: investing in our own businesses now is a “must have.” Globe Newswire.
Canada’s Venture Capital Landscape 2025. BDC.
The Proust Questionnaire. Vanity Fair.
Podcasts
Joy Reid on Black America’s Resistance Reluctance. The Ink.
Vote Canadian: A 22 Minutes Election Special. 22 Minutes.
Full Stand-Up Comedy Roundtable: Jamie Foxx, Sarah Silverman, Chelsea Handler, Hasan Minhaj & More. The Hollywood Reporter.
Jon Stewart – One of My Favorite People. What Now? With Trevor Noah Podcast.
Conferences
À la Une “National” – l’honorable Mélanie Joly. La Chambre de commerce du Montréal métropolitain.
🔍 What’s Sticking With Me
George Orwell is my newest literary crush. I’ve long admired Animal Farm and 1984 for their wisdom and warnings – but in January 2025, I stumbled upon his essay Notes on Nationalism, and it blew my mind.
Written as WWII was ending, Orwell defines nationalism as “the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing not other duty than that of advancing its interests.” While Europe’s leaders celebrated the defeat of fascism, Orwell warned that unless Europe’s intelligentsia could recognize subtler forms of nationalism still at play, rebuilding society would fail.
Orwell’s path to democratic socialism was unexpected. Born to an upper-middle-class family in British India and educated at Eton, he served in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma before rejecting imperialism. His essay A Hanging recounts one moment of moral strain. After years living in poverty, he turned to writing, but it was his time fighting fascism in the Spanish Civil War that provided him with a deep unlock. In Why I Write, he explains:
“Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it… The more one is conscious of one’s political bias, the more chance one has of acting politically without sacrificing one’s aesthetic and intellectual integrity.”
In the 14 years between his political awakening and his untimely death at age 46, Orwell wrote two of the most iconic political novels of all time – and hundreds of essays and articles that are still reprinted today. His writing is crisp, his arguments are pointy, and his tone is so chatty that, aside from the odd turn of phrase, his work reads like present-day commentary… only sharper. No AI sludge, just one man at the peak of his craft, fueled by a clear conscience. If Orwell were alive today, I bet he and Jon Stewart would have a lot to talk about.
I am eager to track down the rest of his writing.
💬 One Sentence I Can’t Shake
All good public speaking is based on good private thinking.
Berkun, Scott. Confessions of a Public Speaker. O’Reilly, 2009.
🧠 The Big Question
I’ve always known I was a creative at heart. But growing up, I believed creatives came only in two flavours: the starving artist, or the tortured genius who oscillates between divine beauty and self-destruction. Neither appealed to me, so I decided to go into accounting.
Over time, my career evolved beyond debits and credits to business partnering, where I could apply creative thinking in a structured setting. But when it came to creative hobbies like writing, I’ve floundered. My recent reading has helped me unpack why.
Clarity of thought. Scott Berkun & William Zinsser (from my Q1 reading list) insist that “clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can’t exist without the other.” Yet I’d compartmentalized structure as part of my “professional brain” – never something to bring to writing. Unsurprisingly, I struggled to get any momentum.
Raison d’être. Orwell called it the political purpose: a “desire to push the world in a certain direction.” I assumed that because writing was a hobby, I didn’t need to define mine. So I kept throwing spaghetti at the wall – without noticing what sticks.
Guardrails. I assumed creativity needed total freedom and space. But Toastmasters has taught me that structure can actually be a springboard. Clear values – like guardrails – make it safer to take creative risks. As Brené Brown puts it, “More often than not, our values are what leads us to the arena door (…) . And when we get in there and stumble or fall, we need our values to remind us why we went in, especially when we are facedown, covered in dust and sweat and blood.“
What surprises me is how much writing resembles business strategy – really! Strategy is about defining your value proposition, identifying where you are, where you’re going, and how to get there. Writing is the same: clarify your purpose, define what’s yours to say and why, and build the habits (processes) to say it well. I used to think my professional and creative identities were separate. I see now that the same principles – clarity, structure, and intention – are what enable them both.
💡 What I’m Curious About Next
In Trevor Noah’s recent conversation with Jon Stewart, they discuss how both legacy media and social platforms strip away context to maximize outrage and clicks. I’ve felt this firsthand: unless I’m immersed in a book, I tend to skim headlines and scroll through soundbites instead of engaging with long-form stories. Then I sit down to write… and wonder why I can’t think clearly. Surprise.
An unexpected benefit of tracking what I read and listen to is that it slows me down. It shifts my focus from consumption to integration – not just passively receiving information, but absorbing it into my own internal framework. Integration is much slower, but I feel more grounded… and more curious.
And that curiosity? It feeds my hunger for context. It pushes me to ask better questions, dig deeper, and connect the dots. I’ve noticed the difference not just in how I write, but in how I lead. Slowing down is helping me move forward.
📝 Creative Update
Oliver Burkeman’s insight from my Q1 reading list rattled me. “Attention just is life (…) So when you pay attention to something you don’t especially value, it’s not an exaggeration to say that you’re paying with your life.” So I did a very accountanty-thing.
Assuming 8 hours of sleep per night, I’m awake 112 hours a week. I made a list of everything I want to give my attention to – projects, goals, relationships – and allocated the time I wished to spend on each. My first draft added up to 160 hours. In a 112-hour week!
It took several rounds of budgeting to bring it down to 120. The process forced me to confront not only my priorities, but also the inefficiencies and distractions I was paying for with my life. Then I took it a step further: I inputted my “attention budgets” into Clockify and have been tracking every hour for the past two months. The results were jarring – my time spent looked nothing like my intention. I had an attention problem.
It’s taken a few weeks of conscious effort, but I am finally seeing alignment. I’m spending most of my time on what matters, and much less on what doesn’t. Attention is life – and I’m finally spending mine with purpose.
📣 Closing Thoughts
How are you nurturing your curiosity? What are you reading, watching, or tracking that’s helping you think more clearly or live more intentionally?
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