About this site
This is a space for writing and documenting about the inner life of someone in the ongoing and seemingly never-ending process of becoming something.
heybrekelly | Stories from a life in progress
I grew up in southern Ontario and spent many years pursuing a career in film and television. I've been fortunate enough to live in many different cities in Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Like many people, the lockdowns during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic were a sort of catalyst for me. I started a career in healthcare communications, I began my transition journey, and I took stock of what kind of life I hoped to build for myself.
Now, I'm a firefighter-in-training based in Winnipeg. I still hold my creativity dear, despite the nagging sensation those two things are incompatible. This site is my attempt to let them occupy the same space.
What you'll find here
The writing here moves between the personal and the reflective. Some posts cut close to the bone—about what it actually feels like to train for a career in emergency services, or to sit with the version myself that only shows up under pressure. Others are slower and more open-ended—questions I'm turning over, observations I haven't finished making sense of yet.
A note on why
I started this site just a few weeks before my first panel interview with the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service. The looming fear of a future where I get what I want and living with the consequences—and rewards—of that choice weighed on me enough to squeeze out some lingering creative energy. Writing has always been a type of release for me. Editing, while necessary, sometimes has to wait.
If any of this makes you think about your own life—the choices you're sitting with, the person you're in the process of becoming, the sense that you want to reclaim the em-dash from generative AI—then it's done what I hoped it would.
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heybrekelly is a personal site. It is not affiliated with any fire service, employer, or training institution. The views expressed here are my own.
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