Julian_Rogers

Julian Rogers: On the Mathematics of Us I’m Julian. Born and raised in Vernon, BC. These days, I split my time between writing about this valley and consulting on something I’ve spent twenty years trying to understand: the messy, beautiful, often illogical intersection of human connection and cash. I’ve been a sex educator, a dating coach, and a researcher. Now I write for the CamoWallet project, trying to make sense of how we value things—and people. My past life was all about sexology. Not the clinical side, not really. More the emotional archaeology of it. Why we want who we want. Why we stay. Why we lie about money on a first date. That work took me from small workshops in Vancouver to private clients all over the world. Now? I write. Specifically, I write about Vernon for the CamoWallet project over at camowallet.app. It’s a strange pivot, maybe. Or maybe it’s not. Because this city, this place, it taught me everything I know about connection. About the real cost of things. About what happens when people are authentic with each other. So I document it. The stories, the streets, the silent transactions that happen every day on 30th Avenue. Living here again, after all the travel and noise... it’s like hearing a familiar song in a foreign café. Unexpected. Comforting. I live just off Kalamalka Road now, near the juncture where the orchards start to give way to the lake effect. My mornings often start with a drive up to Silver Star Road, just to watch the light hit the Monashees. I know every pothole on Highway 6 between here and Lumby. I know which coffee shop on Main Street has the best quiet corner for writing (it’s the Bean Scene, hands down). This city isn’t just where I live; it’s the baseline. The control group in my personal experiment about what a good life actually looks like. It’s where I learned that trust isn't abstract—it’s a neighbour helping you jump-start your car in the Save-On-Foods parking lot when it's -15°C. Honestly, it took me years to stop trying to fix people. In my early work, I thought I had answers. I had frameworks. I’d talk about attachment theory and love languages like they were scripture. But the real breakthrough? It came from failure. From a relationship that imploded spectacularly because we couldn't talk about money. She thought I was frivolous; I thought she was cold. We were both right. It was a masterclass in how financial incompatibility is rarely about the dollars—it's about what the dollars represent. Security. Freedom. Power. That’s the kind of lesson you can’t teach from a textbook. It has to sit with you, uncomfortably, for years. I think that's why people trusted me eventually. Not because I had a PhD, but because I'd been dumb enough to make the same mistakes they were making. Just maybe with a bit more self-analysis afterward. Growing up here in the 2000s was... an education in contrasts. You’d be at a house party up on Adventure Bay Road one night, sneaking cheap beer, talking to someone about their parent's new snowmobile. Then the next day, you’d be at the Schubert Centre helping set up for a seniors' event, listening to stories from people who’d farmed this land since before the highway came through. It taught you to code-switch before I even knew that was a word. One summer, I worked at the Village Green Hotel—the old one, before the big renovation. Making beds, dealing with tourists who thought they'd discovered a secret paradise. It was boring, honest work. But it taught me about transience. About the stories people carry with them. And at night, I'd go down to Polson Park with friends, just... existing. Talking about everything and nothing. The first real conversations I ever had about love and sex happened on those benches, under the big trees, with the sound of the creek in the background. It felt safe there. Quiet enough to hear yourself think. Or to hear your heart break, whichever came first. I was born on a cool spring morning, April 3rd, 1990, at the Vernon Jubilee Hospital. My parents had a small house on a quiet street near the old CN Rail yard—you could sometimes hear the trains shunting at night. Back then, Vernon felt smaller. More agricultural. The big debate was always about the orchard land getting sold for development. My dad worked at the Tolko Industries mill for a while, before the shifts got uncertain. My mom, she was a waitress at the old OK Diner on 30th Avenue. I have these fragmented memories of being there as a kid, the smell of coffee and grease, the clatter of plates, the sound of farmers and truckers arguing about politics or the price of cherries. It felt like the whole world was right there, in that diner. It probably was, in a way. Those people, they didn't talk about their feelings much. They talked about work, the weather, the lake. But you could read everything in the spaces between the words. That’s probably where I first learned to listen. Not for what people say, but for what they’re actually trying to tell you.