I started my first personal blog in December, 2000 on LiveJournal, but this site houses my (aspirationally) professional writing and reviews. To crib from Canadian author James Fell, I’m also an unapologetic social justice warrior who wants to #smashthepatriarchy and to do my part as a white man to help lovingly educate other white men about our inherent privilege and how to eradicate misogyny in our families and communities.
At my core I’m a generalist and I’ll write about almost anything, but I’m usually most interested in writing about how to fix or improve something, and/or how to accurately identify what’s not working properly in a given system (I have a perhaps pathological notion that there’s always a plausible solution to every problem). In my professional life, I’ve written everything from software documentation to business plans to telemarketing scripts to corporate reports and marketing research analysis. I’ve also been a full-time stay-at-home dad since around 2005.
Most recently, my topics of interest have been focused on: parenting and raising socially conscious and respectful kids; how to recover from personal trauma and to effect positive personal behavioural change; and the day-to-day functioning of our local and provincial governments. I’m also a policy wonk and data geek at heart who is most happy digging deep into budgets, spreadsheets and planning documents to see exactly how effectively the resources in a given system are being used.
My connection to the health care system via my physician wife + my own efforts at improving my physical and mental health also drive my reading interests, and between March and June 2020, I (obsessively?) tracked Canada-wide COVID-19 stats + the myriad pieces of writing, analysis and research I’d been reading about coronavirus epidemiology, disease modelling, economic re-opening dynamics and news coverage. My COVID-19 list on Twitter is filled with professional scientists, researchers and writers on the coronavirus pandemic.
For more info about me personally, please see my bio. I also play jazz saxophone, I was Chair of the Shannon Park School Advisory Council from 2012-2014, I used to be Vice-President of Programming for the Halifax Jazz Festival at JazzEast, I was President, Team Manager and Chief of Officials for my kids’ competitive youth swim team, and I’m now a proud Peer Mentor at Eating Disorders Nova Scotia.
I’m not a teacher, but I hold teachers, the teaching profession and public school education very close to my heart. I marched (with my kids) 4-5 times with the NSTU throughout their dispute with the McNeil Liberals in 2016-17, and I also testified at the Law Amendments Committee at that time. That experience fired me up about checking the effectiveness of local government and bureaucracy, and also inspired me to take out a subscription to Tim Bousquet’s adversarial online local newspaper, the Halifax Examiner.
Dustin LindenSmith
Dartmouth, Nova Scotia
November 2020