The sofa surfing chef who created a home

8 April 2025

After over a year of travel, the time to settle down into a new place had arrived. In February, I started renting a room in a house with four other roommates.

As you've likely experienced yourself, moving into a new place with a bunch of people you don't know can put you anywhere on the landscape of joy & sorrow. You could be struggling to sleep amidst noisy roommates. You could have a landlord that is apathetic to helping you address problems on the property. Or in a less dreadful situation, you could have people that are quiet, but almost too quiet: no one talks to each other, and you end up feeling like you've booked an extended stay at a lame hotel.

There is another possibility on this landscape. In what might seem like some kind of dream, you could end up in a house that is filled with roommates that all cook for each other and play board games together throughout the week. And luckily for me, it's not a dream: it's exactly the place I have found myself in this time around.

...and it's in large part thanks to a sofa surfing chef named Paul.

Fortuitously surfing his way into our house​

Paul is a good friend of Tony. Tony is the owner of the house & a fellow roommate here. They met a few years ago during covid and quickly became good friends through good conversations and tasty meals. Since they met, Paul moved from Ontario to New Brunswick with his family, but the two stayed in touch. When Paul began planning this trip back to Ontario to see friends, he had originally intended to stay at our house for only a week, but due to a number of last-minute cancellations, he ended up staying with us for about a month.

A killer chef, Paul's passion for cooking began as soon as he could tippy-toe his way up to reach the spice cupboards. Beyond cooking at home, he also went to a trade school where he developed his skills even further. I am not exaggerating when I say that Paul has got skills: the broad spectrum of cuisines he has mastered is breathtaking. From Western classics like pork tenderloin to far out-dishes from Asia, it is clear that even though Paul has not yet travelled outside of Canada, his cooking can send you almost anywhere in the world.

Even though he doesn't cook professionally right now, he has kept his skills sharp solely through his love of the game (aka making meals for his friends & family as much as he can). So naturally, as any passionate chef would, he used his extra time at our house to make as many meals as he could for us.

The tasty transformation of house into home

When all of this sofa surfing and culinary crafting began, I had only just moved in a few days prior. Most evenings I'd be either hanging out with family or running errands. I'd met all of my roommates and everyone was friendly, but we didn't talk or hang out much (as is the usual default of renting a room in a shared house). But a strange thing started happening: I'd come home almost every night to find all of my new roommates (and sometimes also their partners) hanging out in the living room together enjoying whatever Paul had whipped up.

He'd ask me to take a seat and then proceed to serve me a portion. Part of me still thinks he wasn't really doing this for me; he was so excited to see people's reaction's to his cooking that it lit him up like a Christmas tree. This enthusiasm for cooking was electric. After my first bite, he'd go off telling me exactly how he'd made it. Most of the explanations were gibberish to me, as someone who literally spent a year of his life living off of what is infamously known as "the meat box", an extra-large Tupperware container filled with nothing but just different varieties of cooked meat.

Before I knew it, coming home to dine with my roommates became a part of everyday life. The combo of Paul's enthusiasm for cooking and the fun of getting to know everyone was impossible to say no to. Things quickly went from feeling like I was living in a house with roommates to living in a home with friends.

The era of the meat box had seen its final day; a new chapter of good meals and even better company was now being written.

A month of good times and hot peppers

We'd do more than just enjoy good cooking together; we began to play card games, Mario Party and jam out to music. We swiftly moved through the North American "what do you do for work?" pleasantries to more European-style rowdy conversations. Bets were won and lost (the loser being forced to eat insanely hot peppers 🥲) and memories were made.

That month flew by, and before we knew it, Paul had to go back home to New Brunswick. We were heartbroken. A good friend had just departed, one who had helped bring us all together. I'm not sure about the other roommates, but I definitely had the worry: is he the magic glue that we need to keep hanging out? Are we losing our glue?

Luckily for us, we all wanted to create our own recipe for glue. Tony came up with the idea to keep the good times rolling by cooking for each other. The pitch was that throughout the week, each roommate would cook one meal, with enough for some leftovers too. Everyone was sold, without a second of hesitation. We set up a Google Calendar for the cooking schedule and a Splitwise group for the bills, and started cooking meals together right after Paul went back home.

The legacy of Paul lives on

We're now a full month into this project of keeping the flame lit through our shared effort in the kitchen. We're not nearly as good as Paul, but it's actually kind of fun having to figure it out together. People get their groceries, cook em' up, and bring everyone together at the table to enjoy each other's cooking. We try to share advice with each other on how our cooking could be improved, and surely enough, it does feel like we're getting a tiny bit better, even just a month in. We still enjoy card games too (shoutout Coup), but have chosen to forego the hot pepper "threat bets" in favour of the more tasty cookie-based winning bets (🙏).

Beyond the hanging out, there's also another benefit I wasn't expecting from this whole roommate cooking experiment: my motivation to cook has went from 0 to 100.

Before this, I never really had much motivation to cook. It's not that I hadn't bonded over good cooking: my mom and brother are both great in the kitchen, I lived in China for a year and am witness to the bonding power of dumplings, and also like sharing sweets with other people (shoutout La Patisserie in Kitchener!)

Paul's nightly meals shifted my perspective on cooking because these meals so quickly transformed my new place from just "the bedroom I'm renting" into home . I went from not knowing my roommates at all, to being able to goof around and get into legitimately good conversations with them. Of all of the places I've lived, I had never experienced this kind of swift transformation from house to home, and I love it. I'm actually inspired to cook now because I want to share more good times with my friends and keep deepening that sense of home, for all of us.

In addition to that, there's also the cold hard fact that having your name on a calendar and four other people depend on you for their meal (and leftovers) is a fantastic impetus to get into the kitchen.

And so, the legacy of Paul lives on.

He's likely coming back again later in 2025 to share some more meals and memories with us, and I look forward to welcoming him back into our home, one which he had a hand in building.

Why I quit social media

10 March 2025

Here's the makeover of my Instagram profile.

On the left, you have what the top of my Instagram posts used to look like. On the right, you have what my profile looks like now. 

After much reflection on my relationship with technology, I've made the decision to completely stop browsing and posting on social media.

At the end of the day, it really comes down to a single question. 

How do I want to spend my time? 

The life I seek to live is simple on the surface, yet challenging at its core.

My three priorities in life are to:

1. Share deeply intimate, trusting and resilient relationships with my family and friends;
2. Train my mind to be calm, flexible, and open;
3. Pursue a fulfilling career path that is of benefit to myself, my family and those in my broader community

For a while now, I've been increasingly driven to focus my life on these priorities. I am no longer willing to waste my time on things and people that cause more harm than good for these ideals.

As it turns out, social media was severely damaging the quality of my relationships, my mind, and my career, while bringing virtually no benefit.

In my relationships, social media made me more self-conscious, impatient, and judgemental. It was also pulling me away from time that could instead be used to truly connect to those that matter most, via in-person and phone calls.

My mind felt ceaselessly buffeted by distraction, increasingly anxious, and addicted. I would compulsively check my socials, with no purpose other than to get my next "dopamine hit" (as the kids like to say). 

Finally, my education and career were being stifled because I was unable to focus for long periods of time. Infinite feeds presented an always-available and easy temptation to avoid the challenge of work by instead browsing pleasurable, desirable, or otherwise distracting posts. 

...and so with all of that harm from social media, does it really make sense to keep using it?

Questions for the spell-bound

One of my favourite words as of late is "disenchanted": to break free from a spell or illusion.

The gravitational pull of social media is most certainly a spell that has been unknowingly cast upon many of us. We have somehow come to believe that they are tools for good, and that we have control over these tools. 

How much of a tool was I to once believe this myself?

Luckily, in my experience, asking myself just a few challenging questions was an effective way to disenchant myself and be set free of being a tool.

Here are a few of the questions that I asked myself over the course of a month or two:

1. Is social media making me a more compassionate, empathetic and curious person?

(Tip for an accurate answer when asking yourself: if you thought yes to this question, then ask yourself how you feel about the supporters of a certain political party. Did you know that social media is intentionally feeding you content that reinforce your already existing beliefs and divide you from others who hold opposing ones?)

2. Do I feel closer to my friends and family because of social media?

(In specific regards to scrolling, liking and sharing posts. Using messaging to schedule time together in-person or on calls is a noteworthy exception to this question.)

3. Why am I really posting, and what am I seeking from these posts?

(Is it possible that I have an ego seeking to craft a good-looking image of myself for others?)

These are good to ask yourself, but in reality, they are actually softball questions. There is a fourth question, which is a tad drastic, but its raw honesty had the largest impact for me. 

It's the question of how I want to use my very limited time on this earth.

Let's do some simple arithmetic:

I am about 27 years old at the time of writing this. Assuming I will live to 80, that means I have roughly 2,750 weeks left on earth. If that's not short enough, one third of that time will be slept away, which means that if I am lucky, I have more like 1,800 conscious weeks before I die.

Given how tragically brief life really is, do I want to spend a single second of my time scrolling or posting on social media?

When I really asked myself this, it rattled me to my core and made it evidently clear that there are much better ways to spend my time. There are quite literally at least a million other things that I could do which would actually lead to a more fulfilling and meaningful life for myself and those around me.

Exactly none of those things involve flicking my thumb on a piece of glass designed to squeeze every second of attention possible out of me for profit, through platforms filled with attention-seeking people looking to gratify their desires, and distract themselves at every turn.

Instead, I could enjoy visiting my family. Grab coffee with a friend. Pick up garbage on the street. Help the homeless. Listen to music laying down with my eyes closed. Push myself in exercise, or meet new friends by joining a club. Learn to play an instrument. Cry. Read a book. Meditate. Become more articulate. Make pancakes for someone I love. Touch grass. Go outside and walk for an hour with no specific destination.

This list goes on and on; and it's things like these that I plan to spend my limited time on now. 

Changes for disenchantment

In light of this startling discovery of my brief time, and the fruitlessness of being on these manipulative platforms, I've made some changes:

• I made the jump to the Light Phone (and before that, my iPhone had almost every app deleted off of it, and most of its notifications turned off. I also turned off raise-to-wake and tap-to-wake. These tiny adjustments massively decreased my habitual phone usage!)
• I deleted all of my posts on social media, installed Chrome extensions to hide their feeds, and do not plan to post again. Also, hiding YouTube's recommended videos has been massive for stubbing distraction out
• I have streamlined all messaging from social media accounts using Beeper, and check it once a day on my MacBook. Anyone that wants to reach me faster than that can still text, call or email me

Making these changes was not as difficult as I had feared. The biggest thing is that I miss sending memes to my mom & brother on Instagram, but luckily I can easily make up for this by just making more jokes with them in person :) 

I am now soaking up the positives that started rolling in just a few weeks after I began this journey. These are just a few, but there are certainly others that I haven't listed and likely more to come that I haven't realized yet.

• I feel much calmer, less anxious, less self-conscious, and not so addicted
• I am slowly but surely regaining my attention span. I can read a book for an hour straight for the first time in my life!
• I feel the desire to distract myself steadily decreasing
• I have more random conversations with people and find it easier to just spontaneously call a friend when I want to chat
• I don't have to think about maintaining some kind of image or presence for my ego. I can just be who I am with whoever actually shows up in my life

In short, I'm way more present with myself & others. Could one ask for more? 

Even with all of these changes, I still plan on having some form of online presence. The goal is not to become a ghost.

You can still stalk me

I know how important it is to try and vibe-check someone online, and my moral postulating about technology does not make me exempt!

In lieu of social media posts, here are a few other ways that you can get an idea of who I am and reach out if you'd like. 

• Browse my website
• Check out any recent posts on my Telegram channel
• Read other posts on my blog
• Mull over my goodreads reviews
• Become a viewer on my LinkedIn
• ...or, just shoot me a good ol' fashioned call, text or email (all contact info can be found on my website)

Inviting you to a more examined life

I sincerely thank you for taking the time to read this post. I hope that it inspires you to live a life that fosters deep wellbeing for yourself and those you love. 

I invite you to challenge yourself with the questions shared here, so that you can do exactly that.

May you live a long and meaningful life; one full of what matters to you, shared with the people you love.

~ Edwin Fernando Finch

Welcome to Edwin's blog

8 March 2025

Hello there, welcome to the blog of Edwin Finch.

Here's why this blog exists:

1. I do not post on social media, but I still want to share things that I feel are important.
2. I want to become more articulate, and writing is a great way to practise that.

There'll be no particular schedule for posting; I'm going to write sporadically as I am working through challenging problems or feel the need to publicly share a thought or experience. 

If you want to contact me about anything I've written here, you can find my contact info on www.EdwinFinch.com.