I have a confession to make, and like most confessions in my life, it begins with somebody else pointing at the evidence. Recently, a very close reading of my own Instagram was undertaken — 107 posts’ worth — and the findings were presented to me with the tenderness of a tax audit. My handle, for those who don’t know, is ashofaltrades. Ash of all trades. It was meant to sound versatile but it also screams master of none. Having now reviewed the photographic record in full, I can confirm the trades are real, the mastery is pending, and the tradesman is, in most of the photographs, holding a drink.
Let me walk you through the evidence, the way it was walked through me. Exhibit by exhibit. I will be pleading guilty to most of it.
Exhibit A: The Man of Climate Extremes (No Middle Settings)
In December 2022, in Saskatoon, I posted a photograph of a thermometer situation so dire that my caption simply gave up on grammar: “Are you kidding me! Feels like -54F? To who? I just feel like hell just froze over!! Why do I do what I do!” That is not a caption. That is a distress signal with hashtags. Hell had frozen over, and I was standing in it, in a parka, questioning my life choices in public.
Fast forward to July 2025, aboard a ship in the high Arctic at 82 degrees north — a place where the map basically ends — and there I am on deck in shorts, holding a glass of wine, in front of pack ice. Same man. The species that complained about -54°F in Canada voluntarily dressed for a beach day at the top of the world. And in Hawaii in 2026, under a palm tree, I captioned the scene: “It’s a hard life, but we just have to do what we have to do!” — a sentence I would like the record to show I typed from a tropical paradise, about myself, without a shred of shame.
The audit conclusion: this man does not experience weather. He collects it. Like stamps. Expensive, uncomfortable stamps.
Exhibit B: The Beverage Correspondent
A substantial wing of my Instagram is devoted to what the auditors classified as “a 20-year friendship with Jack Daniel’s.” My own words from Lynchburg, and I quote myself with pride: “The history, fumes and smells of the place reinforced my commitment to our deep friendship of 20+ years! Jack Daniel’s — with Coke or on the rocks — you’re immortal.” I have colleagues I have not described with that level of commitment. I have relatives I have not described with that level of commitment. Well its good you csn choose uour drink. As one of my friends calls Jack as “mother’s milk”!
Jack is not alone in the cabinet of friendships. Kentucky introduced me to the bourbon trail — “Chasing that perfect bourbon on the trail… with a few bourbon bandits” — because apparently my friendships require accomplices. Ireland was summarised, by me, as a place where “it’s all about the whiskey, the greens, rugged coastline and of course Guinness,” in that order, priorities fully declared. And in Lima, at a very fancy club, I posted from among the Peruvian elite with the immortal footnote: “Great pisco, great location, great company, great prices (as long as I am not paying).” There it is. The entire philosophy of the man in one parenthesis. I enjoy the 1% lifestyle at a 0% invoice. This is not cheapness. This is procurement. I am in project controls. We call this cost optimisation, and we are very proud of it.
Exhibit C: The Athlete (Participation Confirmed, Accuracy Denied)
I once went axe throwing and reported back, honestly: “Venting off some steam with some axe throwing! One thing — I can never be accused of being on the mark.” Somewhere there is a wooden target that survived me completely unscathed, and several walls, fences and possibly a neighbouring county that did not. If you are ever in a hostage situation with me as the designated thrower, I suggest you make your peace early.
Houston gave me my first rodeo, and I announced, with the confidence of a man about to be educated by livestock: “This is definitely my first rodeo.” It remains, to date, my most accurate caption. Meanwhile the running posts include the pedant’s classic — “They say 10K, I say it’s 6.26 miles” — because even mid-jog, at dawn, in summer, the engineer in me must correct the units. And there are the gym photographs, the “beast mode” declarations, the fighting talk… followed, in the natural order of my feed, by free cake. The Great White North post says it plainly: “Feeding on free cake, tight deadlines, budget busts and the small matter of delivering the first hot metal.” Beast mode runs on cake. This is documented. Do not @ me.
Exhibit D: The Statesman (Solving Global Issues, Beverage in Hand)
In November 2024 I posted a photograph and captioned it: “Solving global issues — climate change, currency fluctuations, poverty and commodity pricing!” The photograph was of friends around a table. To the untrained eye, this is drinks. To the trained eye — my eye — this is a summit. Somewhere between the second round and the desserts, I am confident we had climate change fully drafted, poverty scheduled for resolution, and commodity pricing parked in a holding pattern pending snacks. The minutes of that meeting were never published, mainly because they were written on a napkin and the napkin has since been promoted to landfill.
And then there is my favourite diplomatic document of all: the Turkish dinner. The caption was just a roll call — Turkey, Russia, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Canada, Poland, Chile, Ghana, Lebanon, India, South Africa — twelve nations, one table, hashtag: #projectcontrols. The United Nations has worse catering and takes longer to reach dinner. Whatever the world’s problems are, I maintain they would be smaller if every negotiation was required to pass the bread first.
Exhibit E: The Working Man (Several Jobs, Questionable Uniforms)
The employment history, as per Instagram: in June 2022 I was “feeding the masses” in what I called my “part-time gig” at a food truck — a project-controls professional moonlighting in mass catering, because the critical path to lunch waits for no man. In March 2020, the feed records the entire planet’s descent into remote work in one caption of mine: “PJ’s, Skype, flip flops and coffee — working in exile.” Historians will note the flip flops. I was operations-ready from the waist up and on holiday from the waist down, like every professional of that era, and I will not be shamed by the record.
The feed also contains my announcement of the Indian version of Tiger King, “coming soon” in April 2020. It is now several years later. The production remains, like several of my project schedules over the years, optimistically baselined and quietly reforecast. No tigers were harmed. One was cast, I believe, but he demanded a better trailer.
Exhibit F: Where’s Waldo, With Better Food
Twice — twice — my own captions ask “Where’s Waldo??” about my own whereabouts, once across two generations in front of graffiti. When the author of a travel feed has to ask where he is, the audit writes itself. The pattern of the feed is a man appearing, at irregular intervals, in jungles (“From the jungles of South America to the African safari”), on safaris, on volcanoes, on glaciers, in deserts — where a camel and I reached a mutual understanding, recorded in my caption as: “Me and the beast of burden — said the camel.” I have read that caption many times. The camel’s assessment stands unchallenged.
India got the definitive review: “The dust, the chaos, the noise, the cows, the dogs, the heat, yet they say ‘no problem’ — this is India. Love it!” And cricket, of course, runs through the feed like a watermark: “Delivering when it matters” for India’s T20 World Cup win, and a pilgrimage to the Melbourne Cricket Ground — “At the G! A few precious hours… Treats don’t get any better.” Treats, for the record, got considerably better in Lima when somebody else was paying, but the G is the G and I will hear nothing against it.
The Auditor’s Verdict
So: Ash of all trades. The climates endured, the beverages befriended, the axes thrown (somewhere), the rodeos attended (one, definitely the first), the global issues solved (pending minutes), the masses fed, the Waldo located (intermittently). Master of none — the handle survives the audit, just barely, on a technicality.
But here is the thing the audit actually found, underneath all of it, and I will say it straight because even a comedy blog on this station has to land somewhere true. Scroll the whole feed and the recurring caption is not really about places at all. It’s “a few good men.” It’s “a few good people.” It’s thirty-nine years of camaraderie resurfacing in one December photograph “when time has finally stood still.” It’s old mates, bourbon bandits, rodeo rookies, dinner-table diplomats from twelve countries, and a ranger in Madikwe with his thumb up. Every trade in the handle turns out to be the same trade, practised everywhere from Saskatoon to Svalbard: showing up, standing your round (terms and conditions in Lima notwithstanding), and collecting people like other men collect stamps.
Master of none, then. But a journeyman of the only trade that compounds — friendship, with a drink in hand and cake when it’s free.
The audit is closed. The feed remains open. Hide your axes.
— Ash, @ashofaltrades, still not on the mark
