Plan By Me

DISPATCH — 12:18 AM — 2026-05-19

By Randy Millis

12:18 AM — Kelowna, BC

I had a plan.

What’s that thing they say about plans?

It’s good to have one. Better to plan ahead. Always have a backup plan.

Plan by me.

No wait.

Stand by me.

That’s where my brain went in the half-awake exhaustion of all this.

For some strange reason that song is floating around in my head tonight. Not even the whole song. Just the part about being in trouble and somebody standing by you.

Maybe that’s what my brain was rambling toward underneath all this exhaustion.

Not rescue.

Not miracles.

Not somebody magically fixing your entire life overnight.

Just standing beside you while things are falling apart a little.

A friend driving you to breakfast.

Somebody helping push your wheelchair downtown.

A courthouse worker being unexpectedly kind.

A registry counter that could have been cold but somehow wasn’t.

A person checking in.

A ride.

A coffee.

A phone charger.

A conversation.

Maybe that’s what I was actually trying to say underneath all of this.

It was just buried under the crust a little bit.

Had to scrape some of the burnt cheese off the top first. With a paperclip maybe. Whatever tool was within reach.

I had a plan, but things did not go as planned.

I’m sitting here at this early hour looking at one shirt hanging on the back of a chair. Who am I kidding? I didn’t even pack it. It was just the shirt I happened to be wearing.

The shirt is illuminated by a little USB rechargeable flashlight because right now I’m basically devoid of most of my normal tech environment.

No Alexa talking in the background.

No smart lights on the wall.

No familiar routines.

No glowing little pieces of infrastructure quietly making life feel organized and inhabited.

Funny the things you notice disappearing.

The routines.

The background noise.

The feeling that your environment belongs to you.

This room works. Technically.

But it doesn’t feel inhabited yet.

It feels temporary.

Like I’m between versions of my life.

Maybe this is my new normal.

At least for tonight.

I did manage to put together almost a full 72-hour bag. This morning at breakfast I joked with people that somehow I had assembled a get-out-the-door kit with a few extras added in. Those extras included a couple of ham radio transceivers, which might have been more useful in a fire or a flood. Right now they are kind of dead weight, but I may still keep one nearby because it is one way I might be able to stay connected with people in my local radio club.

Tomorrow morning I’m going to call the ministry and say plainly: I need fucking help.

It’s not that I think I’m too good for shelters.

I worked in shelters.

I worked outreach.

I was a community support worker.

I was always the caring one.

I was the person who picked you up when your car broke down in the rain. The one who drove across town because somebody was drunk and couldn’t safely get home. The one who saw someone short on groceries and quietly paid the difference.

Even during hard times, I still tried to help people where I could.

One thing that keeps replaying in my head tonight happened very recently outside the hospital around two in the morning. There was a woman outside on crutches crying because she couldn’t get a cab voucher home after being discharged. I walked over to the cab waiting outside and asked if he could get her where she needed to go for twenty-five dollars. I told him if he could make it work for twenty, I’d give him a five-dollar tip. He smiled, she smiled, and off she went.

Now I’m the one needing help.

And to be fair, people have helped me.

Friends have stepped up.

People have donated to my GoFundMe. I set the goal at a number that probably seems outrageous to some people, but honestly so far even the roughly eighty dollars that has come in has already helped bridge immediate survival gaps.

Truthfully, some of that money probably should go toward buying coffee and donuts for the courthouse staff and registry workers who somehow made an incredibly stressful experience oddly human, and at moments even strangely pleasant.

That sounds ridiculous to say out loud, but it’s true.

During weeks where I felt like my entire life was collapsing into binders, exhibits, filing deadlines, courthouse trips, panic, exhaustion, and paperwork, there were still moments where people showed kindness, patience, humour, or simple humanity.

This morning somebody picked me up for breakfast and honestly the companionship mattered more than the meal itself. More nourishing than the bacon and egger, hash brown, and coffee was simply feeling normal for a little while.

And strangely enough the caffeine probably was not as stimulating as the conversation itself.

Not because we were discussing deep philosophy or heavy technology or solving the mysteries of the universe.

Quite the opposite.

It was decidedly simple.

Decidedly normal.

Just people sitting around eating breakfast and talking.

That mattered more than I realized at the time.

I don’t need piles of cash.

I need breathing room.

I need stability.

I need enough resources to stop operating in constant emergency mode.

At one point I half-joked that if the fundraiser somehow hit five thousand dollars I’d probably save a portion of it just to quietly help somebody else later, because despite everything happening right now, that instinct in me has not gone away.

But tonight my brain is spinning on practical things.

Mobility.

Medication logistics.

Storage.

Supplies.

Mail.

Power.

Food.

Where I’m sleeping next.

Breathing around heavy smoke exposure if I end up in congregate shelter spaces while I’m still dealing with this respiratory flare.

And I want to be clear: I’m not judgmental about substance use at all. I’m strongly harm reduction oriented. But I also have to realistically think about my own health right now.

The strange thing is that physically I am somewhat better than I was a few days ago.

I’m hydrated.

I’ve had rest.

I’ve got over-the-counter pain meds onboard.

But I’m still exhausted in a way that sits deep down in your bones.

Not the sheer catastrophic exhaustion from earlier this week, but still exhausted enough that everything feels difficult.

The repeated trips to court, the buses, the wheelchair, the moving, the lifting, the stress, the lack of sleep — somewhere in all of this I seem to have seriously messed up my hands and wrists. One day they were so swollen Melissa had to push me around downtown.

Melissa has helped enormously. She’s done laundry runs, grocery trips, rides, courthouse support, and more. She’s offered to help push me around again over the next few days if needed.

And to clarify something from earlier: Melissa was also my courthouse sherpa, collator, and stapler operator through much of the legal chaos.

But I’m starting to realize I may not be able to maintain the same level of independence I fought so hard to preserve.

I probably should go to a doctor before I injure myself more.

I don’t know what the ministry is going to say tomorrow.

I don’t know where I’ll be tomorrow night.

I still haven’t figured out how insulin supplies are going to reliably reach me.

I still haven’t figured out mail forwarding.

I haven’t had the energy to solve all of this.

And checkout time is coming.

It’s now after one in the morning and I just popped open a can of chicken to slap between two slices of bread because I realized I’m actually really hungry.

I honestly have not eaten that much today besides the bacon and egger and hash brown this morning.

I also forgot there’s water in canned chicken.

So now my bed smells vaguely like canned chicken and a little bit like cat food.

A bit dry.

A bit sad.

But it’s something.

Throughout all of this I’ve tried to keep my sense of humour. I generally try not to take life too seriously, even when circumstances are genuinely bad.

But tonight my thoughts are drifting.

Maybe that’s enough for this update.

Tomorrow around nine in the morning I’ll start making calls and hopefully by eleven I’ll have some clearer idea of what comes next.

Do I stay here another night?

Can I afford to?

What am I eating tomorrow?

Most of the food I brought is survival food: canned stew, canned chili, microwave rice bowls, soup, tuna, canned meat, bread, and shelf-stable odds and ends thrown into bags during chaos before eventually calling an ambulance.

This morning’s breakfast honestly felt like a feast.

Maybe I’m laying the words on a little thick there. I don’t know.

Anyway, that’s it for now.

I’m trying to keep these dispatches honest, even when they ramble.

Right now my phone is plugged in beside me and I keep thinking about something strange: there may come a point soon where I’m staring at a low battery warning knowing my insulin pump and glucose monitor both depend on this device, while also not knowing when I’ll next reliably have access to power.

Tomorrow charging things may matter almost as much as finding somewhere to sleep.