Tag: personal

• À la prochaine, Nice

  

  Our week in Nice has ended. We took an early morning flight out today, connected in DC, and arrived back in Toronto in the evening.

  I love Nice. It’s urban, but it also has great beaches and rocky swimming coves. It shares some of the exact qualities I love about Rio de Janeiro, albeit on a smaller scale.

  It also has a robust road biking culture. And I aspire to one day be able to keep up with the pros on those mountain climbs. Until then, look for me in the bike lanes of Toronto.

  Regularly scheduled programming resumes tomorrow on the blog.

  2026.09.14

• Nice, September 2026

  I have my Fujifilm camera with me on this trip, but it’s been a bit much to carry it around throughout the day with Vivienne and all of her various belongings. So these photos are all shot on iPhone. Sometimes I remember to shoot in RAW (for better post-production), but most of the time these are just quick snaps with the default settings. In my opinion, the photos don’t have the same colour depth and overall richness as the ones I get from my Fujifilm.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  2026.09.12

• Travel isn’t always pretty

  

  Sometimes there’s an elevator down to the metro, but more often than not there isn’t. 

  Sometimes there’s AC, but oftentimes there isn’t.

  Sometimes Vivienne is peacefully sleeping in her stroller or carrier, but sometimes she’s having a diaper blowout meltdown and screaming loud enough that passersby start giving concerned looks.

  Traveling can be positively inconvenient at times. We’ve never traveled with so much paraphernalia before. We’ve never had to keep breast milk chilled on ice and think about bottle expiries while navigating busy metro trains with no room for our stroller. 

  But in my mind it’s like exercising. It’s work, especially with kids, but it changes you for the better. We also want Vivienne to grow up to be adaptable, resilient and patient in the face of hot, urine-soaked transit elevators and the like.

  As Anthony Bourdain once said:

  “Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.”

  We finished our week in Paris, walking and taking transit everywhere. We didn’t step into a car once. We averaged just over 10k steps a day, which is significantly lower than what we would have done sans baby, but it’s still respectable. 

  Seeing the data on my watch and my surging step count reminded me how sedentary my life has gotten over the last two years while working from home (at least from a steps per day perspective).

  It’s unacceptable and I need to make some life changes when I get back to Toronto. But for right now, it’s time to head south.

  2026.09.07

• Packing for urban (and beach) travel with a 3-month-old

  

  We landed on our big-picture luggage strategy for Vivienne’s first trip, and our car seat versus no car seat decision (who wants to drive?), so now let’s look at some of the smaller stuff. As a reminder, we’re going to be operating with one large 85L check-in bag, a Patagonia 30L carry-on backpack, another smaller carry-on bag, and the Ergobaby Metro 3 travel stroller. Below is a mostly comprehensive list of the other, less-obvious things we’re bringing. Most of what you see pictured will be going in my carry-on backpack.

  Pictured (from left to right):

  • Baby carrier for urban exploring on foot
  • Portable fan that attaches to our travel stroller (charges via USB-C)
  • Diaper pack cube with 20 diapers and a fresh pack of wipes (this is going in our carry-on just in case we once again become quarantined at Brest Airport and we can’t buy diapers for 24-48 hours)
  • Smaller packing cube with clothes, burp cloths, and other important stuff for Vivienne
  • Smaller diaper bag that we’ll use for diaper changes (instead of carrying the bigger diaper pack everywhere)
  • AIAIAI headphones for the plane (these will get cut if we end up short on space)
  • Various chargers and cables
  • Plane and beach reading material (including Monocle’s summer newspaper, Med, Mountains & More)
  • Fujifilm camera (it’s been a while since I’ve taken this out)
  • GoPro, and selfie stick, which also doubles as another stand for our baby monitor (these are liable to be cut as well)
  • Cycling cap and cycling shoes not pictured here (plan is to do some road biking even though I’m the furthest thing from conditioned this summer)
  • Vivienne’s brand-new passport, where she could pass for George Costanza (reminder that I don’t love Canada’s most recent passport design)
  • MacBook Air (I used to carry my Pro around everywhere; this is a game-changer for weight)
  • Memory card reader
  • Sunglasses (including a pair for cycling)
  • Handheld luggage scale
  • Apple USB-C European plug block (we picked one up a few years ago for simplicity)
  • Baby monitor travel stand (for the Nanit)
  • 2 x universal travel adapters
  • Laser distance measuring device so I can nerd out about European built form
  • 45W battery pack with USB-A and USB-C plugs (note, this cannot be checked and must go in a carry-on)

  Not pictured:

  • Change of clothes for the flight in case we are victims of a blowout
  • First aid / pharmacy kit for Vivienne
  • Breast pump apparatuses & bottles
  • Pacifiers and clips
  • Disinfecting surface wipes for diaper changes on the go
  • Doggie bags and Ziploc bags for wrapping up dirty diapers and other such things
  • Floating pool lounger with sun shade for infants
  • Portable beach tent for Vivienne
  • Portable sound machine (charges via USB-C)
  • AirTags in our checked bag and carry-on

  2026.08.30

• I’m going going, back back, to WordPress WordPress

  When I first started writing this blog in 2013, I started on Tumblr. Then about 6 years ago, I decided that Tumblr wasn’t the right platform for a written blog like mine, and so I moved to WordPress (specifically WordPress.com — not a self-hosted setup). About two years ago, I packed up and moved this blog once again, this time to Paragraph. I was trying to shift more of my online activity onchain, and I liked the idea of my posts being permanently stored on a blockchain like Arweave.

  But it turns out that Paragraph wasn’t the best fit for me. I’m still long crypto and I have it set up to syndicate my posts to the old site, but I found the platform more restrictive than my old WordPress setup, and its recent update also pivots the product to much more of an AI-focused media platform (with more credits to buy), and that’s not how I like to write. I just want to open a blank post editor, write my own words (sometimes post photos), and then hit publish.

  So, I’ve decided to return this blog to WordPress, but using a self-hosted setup (with Hostinger) and with my email newsletter being once again sent out by Mailchimp. To be honest, I really questioned this decision. Should I just use Substack like seemingly everyone else? Isn’t WordPress kind of old school? It’s certainly not the easiest to set up (I still have a bunch of housekeeping to do) and Mailchimp is going to again cost me hundreds of dollars per month given the size of my mailing list, but I decided it’s the best decision for me for two main reasons.

  One, I want a site that is as simple and timeless as possible. I’ve been writing basically every day for 13 years and in my mind I’m going to continue writing for at least the next decade. Two, I want to be able to customize my site and my email newsletter as I see fit. This blog is a personal blog, but it is also intended to be the top of the marketing funnel for everything that I’m working on with Globizen. The simple idea is that someone discovers me through my writing, maybe something resonates, and then that leads them to one of our projects or to book a stay at Parkview Mountain House.

  When you write every day, it’s easy to fall into a routine. Most days it’s a real commitment (okay, slog) to find the time to get something out into the world. But whenever I do a big reboot of the blog, I feel reinvigorated. It’s a time when I take the time to think about what I’m doing every day and then adjust as needed.

  Going forward, you can expect to find the same content focused on real estate, cities, and design. But I’d also like to write more personal posts, more travel posts, and get back into sharing my photography. AI muted my desire to take photos, and as much as I think AI is wonderful, I’m feeling a bit of fatigue around it. Part of this return to WordPress is about getting back to basics: a very simple landing page with authentic words, photos, and links.

  The only changes you should notice today are formatting ones, both at brandondonnelly.com and in your inbox. It’ll probably also take me another week or two to fully settle in with the new setup, but regardless, emails will continue to get sent out at 6 AM ET. Onward.

  2026.08.02

• I love work

  

  I spent this morning drafting the third post in my BARED blog series. First one, here. Second one, here. If any of you would like to be featured next, or know of someone who you think should be featured next, please send me an email or tweet.

  At this point, I need to move onto other things today. But I did want to mention a post that Ev Williams (Blogger, Twitter, Medium…) recently penned where he talks about keeping technology in check and the drain of being always connected.

  Here are two interesting excerpts:

  “I’ve spent the last 20 years breathing and building the internet. So I have a good sense for the benefits of always-available instant access and all it entails. I also have a strong appreciation for the drain being constantly connected can cause on your health and sense of well-being.”

  “Building companies requires a ton of work — and I love work. But I’ve also found that working 24/7 no longer produces the best work product or the best life experience (not that it ever did).”

  This really resonates with me, as I am sure it does for many of you. I like being always connected. I like waking up every morning and writing a blog post. I like saying yes to things. And I, like Ev, love work. 

  But it can be draining when your ambition seems to exceed your body’s ability to keep on going. And when that happens, you no longer produce your best work, which is the whole point. 

  So in the end, I think we all need these little checks and balances. Exercise is number one for me. It is well worth the time it takes. What do you do for balance?

  2016.12.04