#108 See a Broadway Play

Friday night my beautiful wife and I, accompanied by a couple friends, went to the Regina Globe Theatre’s production of Honk, the Musical Tale of the Ugly Duckling. This is the second year that we have invested in season tickets to The Globe and we have been enjoying the quality of theatre available in our city.

I have something to admit, I love live theatre and live musicals. We have seen The Phantom of the Opera twice and loved it both times. These facts have lead me to put #108 See a Broadway Show on my list. Alternatively, to see a show in London would be equally enjoyable to me. My wife and I almost did this a few years ago while in London but a combination of scheduling (or lack of), inability to pick the show we wanted to see, and concerns over our budget lead us to not seeing a show.

Of course I regret this now but can’t do anything about it. One of the new pacts that I have made in my life is that I refuse to not do the things that I want to do. From this point on, if I have the opportunity to do something I want to do, and it is logical to take that opportunity, I will take it. After all, isn’t that the way we should all live our lives?

A couple of quick updates on some of the other items on my list:

I have a great love of photography but the last couple of years, especially during my time when I returned to university, I kind of let my photography hobby do by the wayside. I miss picking up my camera and having the chance to be creative and so I came up with #121 Take at least one photo a day every day for a year. I started my way towards my goal on Thursday and I am happy to say that it has not only forced me to pick up my camera every day (I will be posting pictures soon). Today I went for a walk and snapped happily away. I am at my mother-in-law and father-in law’s farm in rural Saskatchewan at the moment and although it is a bit of a frosty morning, I was able to stay out for over half-an-hour and took over 60 pictures. It is exactly what I enjoy doing and would probably have not done it if I had not made this a goal.

Another goal I have made is to work on my creative writing and write at least 1,000 words every week (#124). This week I have so far written almost 700 words (and will spend part of the rest of the day to make sure I achieve 1,000 words) on a short story that I have been working our in my head and on paper for a couple of months if not more. Once the story is complete, I plan on entering it into a writing competition and starting on my next project.

These long term goals are stepping stones to help me accomplish my bigger goals like #5 have a book published, #6 Have a photo in National Geographic, and #25 and #26 winning contests in writing and photography. I truly believe that by taking these small constant steps I can not only create good habits of accomplishing work I enjoy but I can also accomplish bigger goals.

I am off to do some writing, need to get this done before the Grey Cup kicks off this evening. Go Riders!

Blood, Art and Beers

Thursday was an enlightening day for me. At the moment I am working from my home as my company awaits the completion of construction of our new office/warehouse. This has given me some flexibility in my days and I took advantage of it Thursday to do something that was long overdue. I went down to Canadian Blood Services and donated blood. It has been more than a year since I have been down there (I was blacklisted for a year due to my recent travels in rural China and have been procrastinating for the last couple of months) and it was definitely time to start donating again.

This is something I have seen on quite a few people’s bucket lists and I have to say that I definitely encourage everyone to donate whenever they can. My experiences are that there is relatively no pain involved (I find the worst part is when they remove the tape from my hairy arm) and really where else do you go and get free cookies in today’s world? Why (other than the free cookies) should you donate? For one, this is the opportunity to save a life. This is not a direct saving of a life, but every time you donate, your blood is used to help someone survive a crisis in his or her life. In Canada someone needs blood every minute of every day, and you have to remember that Canada is a small country population wise. Canadian Blood Services has some interesting stats on blood needs, check it out here: http://www.blood.ca/centreapps/internet/uw_v502_mainengine.nsf/page/E_Who%20Needs%20Blood In short, I encourage you to put this on your personal list and get it done!

The main reason I bring up is that it has reminded me of something that I wanted to do years ago. When I was in my late teens I had a friend that had cancer and needed a marrow transplant. I wanted to get put onto the Stem Cell and Marrow Registry so hopefully I could help someone out there in the same position as my friend. This was at a time before you could find any information you want off of the internet, not that it mattered because it took half a day to download one page (or that’s how it felt anyways). The short story is that to be put on the registry, you had to go to an information session and watch a film so you knew what you were getting yourself into. They only offered it a couple times a month and since I was working out of town quite a bit at the time, I was never able to make the sessions. Shortly after, my friend passed away and it seemed like I would remember to go to the sessions, eventually it went to the back of my mind as a someday thing that I wanted to do but never did. I have now added it to my list although I am right on the limit of the weight to height ratio allowed, it is one more reason for me to get my ass of the couch and back to exercising. I hope to have this ticked off before my next birthday (in January).

Thursday evening, I had the opportunity to meet up with an old friend, Terrance Houle who has been making a name for himself as an nationally and internationally renowned artist. Check out his art at http://www.terrancehouleart.com or if you are in New York at the National Museum of the American Indian. Terrance and I are fast food vets from back in my younger years when I lived in Calgary. When we sat down for a couple of beers, it was just like old times, we laughed our asses off and just had a good time. A few of things I took away from the evening are that a person who has passion and loves what they do can accomplish great things in their field if they are willing to share their work and their passion, when you have the chance, you should share your passion with others (Terrance was in Regina working on a one week residency), and talking to people who love what they do encourages you to do the same.

All around it was a great day and I hope we all can find the thing that we can be passionate about and will make us happy plus encourage or help others.

Death and Destruction as Stepping Stones to a Better You

As I sit here today pondering my list and watching the snow grow ever deeper outside my door I have several things on my mind. It is convenient that today is the day I finally signed up as a campaigner on Seb Terry’s blog http://100thingssebterry.blogspot.com. Seb provided the push I needed to finally put together my “bucket list”, make it public, and put a plan together to accomplish it. “Shit or get off the pot,” as my dad used to say.

I have never met Seb but heard about him when he was staying in my hometown in the pursuit of one of the items on his list, #23. Deliver a baby. He was able to check off a few things from his list during his time here and I have followed his quest since that time. If you need some inspiration, or just want to read about some Austrailian traveling around the world doing crazy stuff like #36 walk across a country (France) or #73 get shot (both of which he has done) I recommend reading his blog. While there you can help him achieve one of his goals, which is raise $100,000 for Camp Quality (a charity supporting children with cancer).

The reason I am talking about him today is that the push that made him set out on the journey he is on now was initiated by the sudden death of a good friend of his. Unfortunately this is the kind of event that it takes sometimes to spark us out of the ruts that we get ourselves into. In my case I can honestly say that the passing of my father when I was 19 and the sudden deaths of an aunt and cousin only a couple years later affected my life greatly. My father was my hero and my friend, my aunt I always felt, even when she was alive, was my guardian angel and my cousin was the guy that lived every moment to the fullest and got every once of life from the 19 years he was allowed on this planet. The only positive I can really take from these events is that I simply don’t take life so seriously anymore. When little things go wrong (or even some big things) it really doesn’t seem so bad because they mean nothing when you look at the big picture. And those deaths, as hard as they were on me, made me appreciate what I have in my life and made me realize that I can weather any storm if I need to.

Today is the second anniversary of the death of a good friend of mine. He lost a relatively short battle with cancer and I think it came as a great shock to all of his friends when we got the news. Cory was an inspirational person who overcame a lifelong “disability” to accomplish some great things. I write it as “disability” because he never really seemed to treat it as a disability although most people would consider it so. My friend Cory was a “little person” but to us he was just another guy we hung out with, probably larger than life than any of us were if the truth be told. We treated him the same as any other person in our group and he never expected to be or wanted to be treated any differently. He lived his life to the fullest right to the end, even setting up some scholarships before he died to be presented in his name at our former high school.

I take inspiration from Cory’s life and try to remember that nothing is impossible if you set your mind to it. Seb Terry takes inspiration from his friend who also lived his life to the fullest right to the end. The funny thing about it is that the people that we so often take inspiration from are not trying to inspire us at all. They are just smart enough to know that life has an unknown expiration date so we need to make the most of it while we can. That is what they do, live life every day, just like you and I, except they make the choice that tomorrow will not be a carbon copy of today because what would the point be to that?

Death is on my mind for other reasons today as well (I am not this morbid normally I promise.) I live in a province with a relatively small population (just over a million people) and the norm is small towns. I lived in one of these small towns for 10 years before moving back to Regina to finish my degree. This past weekend at two of the neighbouring communities of my former home suffered a great tragedy. A vehicle collision killed 6 people including 4 young men in their late teens and early twenties from one community and a mother and her grown son from another. These things are always tough but even more so in a small community where people literally know everyone else. My thoughts and prayers go out to everyone who lost someone close and although I don’t believe anything “good” can come from the accident, I hope people can use the memory of the lives of these people to inspire their own lives, even if just some small way.

We are also coming up on the one-year anniversary of the death of the brother of a close friend of my wife and I. I know she has used his memory to create some positive things in her life even though it has been incredibly hard for her. I wish her and her family all my love and prayers and hope they can celebrate his life and not dwell on death and know we are always only a call away if they need to talk and would always drop everything to support them. I believe strongly in the power of family and friends, if I lost all my material possessions today, I know I could rely on the love of family and friends but if I lost all my family and friends, all the money in the world could not fill the void.

Death and destruction is on my mind for a different reason as well. I was fortunate to spend 4 weeks on a international business study trip to the Republic of Korea (South Korea) last year. It was an amazing trip and I had the opportunity to meet some amazing people from Korea (and around the world). I look forward to the day when I can bring my wife to see some of the places I was and meet some of the friends that I made (#123 on my list). In South Korea they have mandatory military service and most of the young men that I met there are currently involved in the military in some way. With the recent actions by North Korea that killed two South Korean soldiers and two civilians I worry a great deal about my friends. It is amazing to me that as advanced as we like to pretend our civilization is, there is still conflict around the world and trillions of dollars spent on defense budgets while billions of people live in poverty.

Short of the leaders of countries putting themselves and their families on the front lines in the direct line of fire, I don’t see that this will change anytime soon. I think it is a goal of many of us to make the world a better place; it is for me for sure. I know I have to start in my little corner of it and make what changes I can. In the meantime I will continue to try to come up with a solution for world peace and I will pray for the soldiers of the world who are simply doing the job they are sent to do, whether they are South or North Korean, Canadian, American, etc.

I will keep believing that I can make changes in myself and my community that will make a difference, and I will continue to take inspiration from my heroes and friends, whether still on earth or gone to a better place.

With every step,

With every obstacle,

With every dream and challenge,

There are those you meet,

Those you love,

Those who touch your heart and life.

Written in Cory’s honour by his sister Carla

Hello

One of my favorite quotes from The Simpsons is “you remind me of me before the weight of the world crushed my dreams.” In my younger years I used to say it in jest about young teenagers starting at the fast food restaurant I worked at through my college years. They would be excited for their first job, the same first job I was now I was now cynical of. It was funny at the time, but when I think of it now, it just seems sad.

When I was younger, nothing seemed impossible. There was nothing to stop me from accomplishing all my dreams. But, you work at a few crappy jobs, you work or deal with people with no respect for others, or thanks to union rules you can’t turn your term position into permanent while some useless person that does nothing keeps their job because of length of service not quality of work. It can make a person cynical, or it did for me anyways. Although I still had dreams, they were not world changing dreams.

I envy the people who have never had those doubts and have dreamed big their whole lives but I am also thankful that I have now rediscovered my inner child. It all started when I met my soul-mate and she started to encourage me to pursue my love of photography. I started to show my work to family and friends and got some positive feedback and started to realize that I can accomplish things that I put my mind to. Since then, I have been discovering the joy of travel, photography, writing, and just accomplishing bigger things in general.

But it is no longer enough. The time has come to make a list of things of things I want to see and do, my so-called “bucket list”. And in hopes of making myself more accountable I have decided to make the list public. I tend to be a bit of a procrastinator and have learned that by making lists for myself I can more easily keep myself focused.

Many things on my lists are not things I can just go out and accomplish tomorrow (ie. it would not be possible or even advisable for me to go out tomorrow and run a marathon given my current level of fitness.) I have added steps to my list as to the steps I need to complete on my journey and am keeping a journal of what I need to do each day. The only thing that can stop me now is me and I refuse to let that happen any longer because I deserve better.

I certainly am open to all encouragement and criticism and look forward to hearing from people with goals similar to my own. My short term goal is to accomplish 40 goals before I am 40, which only gives my a little over two years but what is the use of setting goals without challenging yourself?

Winston Churchill said, “history will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.” We all are in charge of writing our own histories, and although we may not all change the world we can change our little part of it for the better and that is what I intend to start doing… before I kick the proverbial bucket.