Chris Austin Music

Today marks the first day of a self-imposed 12-week challenge.

Sam has a new app she’s using with clients. It is pretty cool: tailored workouts, meal tracking, personal trainer check-ins, weigh-ins, and progress pictures all housed in one place.

I can attest that she spent a lot of time looking for an app for online coaching to invest in. There is a lot of choice overload in online fitness spaces, moreover, fake people, bot followers, or generally disingenuous (even harmful) stuff on social media. However, there are equally many good people doing good work. Sam and #teamdemelofitness exemplify such good people.  

It’s been two months since my sappy post celebrating Sam’s fitness business. I can’t believe how quickly summer flew by. Maybe it’s just one of those “getting older” moments, but I feel like I wrote that a few weekends ago—not a few months. Samanthajoefitness.com launched, Josh’s new gym is open/thriving, and the whole team there truly inspire me.

My goal is to be in the best shape I’ve been in since my surgeries 12 weeks from now. I’ll take a couple weeks off Dec 14^th to New Years, and hope to make 2026 an even better year than 2025.  

Over the last week, I re-read the posts from a “1000-words-a-week” blog I kept during the initial post-pandemic years. It was refreshing re-reading my thoughts from this challenging period. I kept this blog for almost two years, so it was cool that it ended just over 100k words and 100 posts.

I want to selectively start to re-share some of those posts and write again informally and publicly.

I’ll be continuing to release music ideas every Friday and personal writing on Mondays to share my progress, thoughts on various topics, and simplified summaries from my academic work.

More soon,

Chris

Sappy post warning:

I’ve had an emotional weekend and challenging day today.

I’m very lucky to have a lot of support from some truly incredible people in my life. I had such a good talk with my Dad yesterday, my older brother today, and am beyond excited to reconnect with family out West when I go visit the coolest of the Austin boys out in Kelowna.

There is a lot on my mind between work, creative goals, academic goals, and my family/friends.

However, one thing in my life right now leaves me without any doubts or reservations.

Sam, you are a truly incredible person.

You’re truly beloved by your clients and your people. You keep a small circle of friends and mentors, and your actions each day speak volumes about your character.

The adversities that you have overcome at this stage in your life in order to be where you are now professionally inspires me.

You have stood by me as I have been navigating big choices, striving to become the best version of myself, and just doing my best to find my way.

I’m at a crossroads.

I am unsure about a lot of things right now, but steadfast in my commitment to loving you everyday.

Here’s to your new website incoming, your team’s new gym launching with a truly incredible owner, group of colleagues/leaders, and to your continued growth and prosperity as you help people achieve sustained wellness.

To my friends, family, and anybody reading:

This website was born when I kept a 1000-words-a-week blog project over the initial years of the pandemic (during the time when things were much more restricted and locked down).

At that time in my life, I was releasing music, sharing my writing while completing my doctoral coursework, and teaching online with Fanshawe and Conestoga College.

I unpublished the website back in 2023, but re-read everything I wrote over January, and am planning on turning those blog posts into a cool coffee-table project as I wrap up my dissertation.

I’ll start to blog again a little bit here and there to share thoughts from my dissertation, but also to share and promote creative music projects. I’ve been writing and recording privately for the last couple years, but feel proud of the music I’ve made, and am excited to share things with the public again to see where things go.

Check out the shot below from my apartment balcony: to represent these metaphorical crossroads.

More soon,

Chris

I am so honoured and grateful after reviewing my student feedback surveys for the Fall 2021 semester. Last semester I saw an alarming increase in mental health self-disclosures from students and many of my colleagues echoed this concern. The pandemic has been very tough on education and many students, who are already under tremendous pressure, feel overwhelmed and helpless. Making a positive impact in my students’ lives is personally important to me; if a student fails a class, I consider it a personal failure. If somebody doesn’t ever attend a class or hand anything in that is one thing, but if they are attending class and completing assignments, there is no reason they should have trouble passing my intro writing classes. If they did, that would, in my opinion, be on me.

Frankly, last semester was hard on me:

I had some really difficult things in my personal life right at the end of term and was having trouble with the pandemic like everyone else. I was completing the last seminar of my PhD coursework, co-coordinating the department’s theory sessions, teaching three college courses and TAing one at the University (worrying a lot for students in crisis), all while still trying to find time for my personal writing and music.

All that said, getting a 4.9/5 overall mean score from my students really makes it worthwhile.

Since these courses were delivered online, the students never really saw me or met me outside of zoom (where they rarely saw my face because I was almost always screen-sharing course content). As a result, this feedback feels like it is solely based on the merits of my course material and my written feedback/communication. I am so happy with this result; it motivates me to continue pursuing a career in academia.

It has been a very hectic semester for me; I have my comprehensive exams in February for my PhD and have been teaching part-time at Fanshawe while taking my final course, “Questioning Aesthetics”, at Western, and co-coordinating the department’s Theory Sessions. I was offered some courses at Conestoga College next semester and have really been struggling with the balancing act of teaching, studying, and having a personal life. Getting an email like this from an international student makes it all so worthwhile and really puts things into perspective. Next semester is going to be even busier than this past one, but I am feeling as confident and organized as possible. Nonetheless, I am definitely looking forward to the holiday break, and to having time to just focus on studying for comps and spending time with the family.

I have seen several people sharing their disgust over Canada’s residential school system over the last few days on social media.

The news of 215 children’s remains being discovered at a former B.C. residential school has compelled many people to educate themselves on this dark history—I think the fact that reconciliation is widely discussed and that Indigenous issues are being taken more seriously is encouraging. Nonetheless, social media activism can (sometimes) feel like an empty gesture when it is not backed up with real-world actions.

That statement is not meant to be an insult to anybody who has recently posted about the residential schooling system; these posts are an important part of bringing forward awareness and compassion. Rather, this statement intends to stress that going beyond social media or using social media in conjunction with other forms of advocacy, in my view, is what people should strive toward.

This year I had the pleasure of working as a TA at Western University’s Indigenous Student Center; the bright and passionate young students I tutored there taught me just as much as I taught them. This TA experience drove me to get special permission from my department to take a course called “Indigeneity and Decolonizing Research” with the Faculty of Education. This summer intersession course has been such a rewarding and challenging learning experience.

In our last meeting, we had a guest speaker, Karen Chaboyer, who shared her experiences with us as a residential school survivor. This was one of the most profound experiences I have ever had in a seminar course throughout my decade in post-secondary education. If you’re wanting to learn more about the abhorrent residential schooling system, I would strongly encourage you to buy a copy of this book and support Karen’s brave and important work. I am doing a presentation in my meeting this coming Wednesday, and Karen’s book was instrumental to preparing for this presentation.

Intergenerational trauma is real; there is a lot of work to be done towards reconciliation, and despite some progress (whether in the academy or in a more broad social sense) Indigenous people are still treated horribly today. I have always liked the word egalitarianism as a telos in these kinds of conversations—hoping that we can all continue to progress towards building more egalitarian cultures.

I have been having a tough time with the stay at home restrictions here in Ontario; however, I do understand the importance of keeping vulnerable people safe. What frustrates me the most is that the rules change so frequently; this capriciousness makes it very difficult to plan your professional life. For example, I can only imagine how hard this must be for small business owners in the restaurant communities.

Personally, I have been doing a lot of music and writing and have been waiting to release things and just sort of staying creatively productive and academically productive. I hope this lockdown doesn’t get extended to June 2nd because there are people I really miss and want to see!

Fingers crossed that case counts go down below 1000 per day consistently and this state of emergency stay at home order lifts next week on the 20th.