Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.
I really think that the opportunity to ‘break bread’ at a meeting makes the meeting special. Breakfast and lunch meetings are more than a chance to get work done, they are also an opportunity to connect.
It’s not just about filling your belly, and it’s about the sharing of more than a meal. It’s an opportunity to build a connection that goes beyond the necessities of work. The act of eating together helps to build relationships in a way that a regular meeting doesn’t allow.
Breaking bread is a way to build relationships that simply doesn’t happen when food isn’t one of the things being shared.
I love getting together with family over the holidays. It’s a chance to focus on being together, eating, and being merry. 2025 hasn’t been easy, and it’s nice to spend the end of the year with the people I love and care about.
I hope everyone is doing the same, finding people they care about to spend time with. If not, make the hard ask. There are people who care, reach out.
Later today I head to Kamloops for an all-day meeting tomorrow. The principals of Provincial Online Schools are meeting. We connect with the Ministry of Education in the morning, and spend the rest of the day addressing concerns and supporting each other. While there is an option to connect online, it can’t be understated how valuable it is to meet face to face occasionally.
I’ve shared this before, but it’s an important point: I have more in common with these principals than I do with all my colleagues in my school district. Online learning has different funding rules than regular schools; Different approaches to learning and support of students; Different demands at different times of the year. We also have very different needs for support, and a lot of times we look to each other for that support.
Sure, we are a group that are comfortable connecting online, and we do that often. We even have a WhatsApp group where we ask questions and support each other. But there is something really special about getting together face-to-face a few times a year. And while that meeting usually happens a bit more locally for me, it’s my turn to put some travel time in.
It will be a short, overnight trip, but it will be worth it to connect with my long distance colleagues.
For generations we have looked to our elders as the knowledge keepers. Now knowledge is stored in bits and bytes, and shared in video format. A boy doesn’t look to dad or granddad to learn how to shave, he learns on YouTube. A girl learns to apply foundation and makeup from Instagram Reels or TickTock. Changing a headlight on your car? There’s a YouTube video with your exact make and model showing you every step. Cooking, traveling, losing weight, gaining muscle, putting contact lenses in, or beating a level on your favourite video game? You are probably going to search for how to do it online before you ask someone for help.
Something to recognize is that many knowledge keepers are the ones sharing and creating the videos we seek, so in a way, their knowledge is still being transferred. Just like people before the internet looked to books for wisdom and insight, seeking a video of someone doing the exact task you are going to do is a very useful way to learn. This isn’t an issue of knowledge being lost, and in fact, is a useful way to store and share information. The question is, what is being lost?
What social interactions between generations are being left out of the YouTube ‘How To’ era? Is there a kind of wisdom being lost, or is it just a loss of connection?
I’m conflicted when thinking about this. Part of me thinks that we are disconnecting from our knowledge keepers, our elders, our storytellers, and that we are missing out in a shared, personal experience. And yet I also think of a kid in a remote town without a library learning about our universe online from physicist Brian Cox. Or a child of a single parent who works two jobs getting an online tutorial on a topic their busy parent has no time to give them. How lucky are they to have the internet fill the knowledge gap?
We can access our knowledge keepers online as well as face-to-face, it’s not an either/or situation… but I guess that what I’m wondering is if we haven’t forgotten that there is a richness to learning in-person from our knowledge keepers? Are we too quick to use Google or Chat GPT to seek quick answers and missing out on a story, an interaction that builds a core memory? Are we losing a richness of experience that comes with sitting with our elders and learning from them?
It was a turkey-less Thanksgiving this year. No big dinner plans, just a couple small family gatherings. I didn’t really miss the turkey, or stuffing, although I admittedly have a bit of a craving for cranberry sauce. I often joke that turkey is just a delivery platform for cranberry sauce.
Joking aside, while it’s nice to have traditions, and plan big meals together, it’s the together part that’s more important than the meal. Sitting in a restaurant with my wife and two girls Sunday night was wonderful, and a slightly larger family luncheon yesterday was enjoyable too, with my in-laws and sister-in-law. Then a quiet movie night ended the weekend.
This morning my oldest heads back to Vancouver Island and we are all back at work. The long weekend is over, and regular routines start again. Turkey or no turkey, what made the long weekend special was being together.
November 12th 1985 was a cold, overcast day in Toronto. I was taking the bus home from school during my Grade 13 year. For those who do not know, Ontario had a Grade 13 for anyone planning to go on to university.
I had to take two busses home and my transfer happened a half block away from North York General Hospital. My grandfather was at that hospital after a minor heart attack and I thought maybe I’d go see him before going home. Then I got to the corner and decided that I’d just go home, I had just visited a couple days before.
I went to the bus stop and waited about 8-10 minutes for the bus before seeing it approach the traffic lights behind me. I remember at that very moment changing my mind, thinking ‘I’m right here, I should visit him’. So I walked back to the street corner as the bus approached and passed, and I made the turn to go visit Papa T.
When I got to his hospital room I could hear him having an argument with my Granny about some minor thing. He was shaving, sitting upright in his bed with an electric razor, my granny holding a small mirror for him. We had a nice visit and I felt great walking back to the bus stop afterwards.
The next morning I was at the school for a 7am swim practice and about half way through I felt awful. I couldn’t describe the feeling then but dread would be the term I’d use looking back now. I actually stopped my set and got out of the pool. What made me feel worse was that a couple other kids stopped and joined me on the bench. I was team captain and this was a bad example I was setting, but I just couldn’t get myself back into the pool.
For first class I had a spare block and so did my friend Kassim, who had a car. I had never done anything like this before but I looked at my buddy and said, “Kassim, I feel awful, can you drive me home?”
He didn’t. He convinced me to stay. It was Grad Photo Day and we both had appointments for our photos before lunch. “Stay until lunch”, he said, “Get your grad photo and if you still feel like this at lunch I’ll take you home.”
He convinced me to stay, despite how awful I felt. I couldn’t understand the feeling I was experiencing because I didn’t feel sick, and so missing photos didn’t make sense.
I made it to lunch and went to the cafeteria. I remember pulling my lunch out of the brown paper bag it was in as I sat down. I was saying to Kassim and a couple other friends we sat with, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I just feel like shit.”
Then I sat down, looked up and locked eyes with my sister peering across the cafeteria. This was unusual to say the least because she went to a different high school. We locked eyes, then with no explanation I simply said, “It’s my grandfather.” Then packed my lunch back into the bag, got up and walked out with my sister.
This made no sense to my friends, but they had met my sister so knew I was going home. I don’t remember my sister saying anything to me. I don’t think I signed out. We got into my uncle’s car and drove straight to the hospital.
I wish I didn’t go. I wish my last memory of Papa T was of him shaving and talking about what he was going to do after getting out of the hospital, not him on life support with his eyes taped shut because he was leaving them open, unblinking. But I got to say good bye to his body after he was already gone.
I went home and wrote this poem. I haven’t seen it in over 25 years, but my sister is helping my mom declutter before moving, she found it, and sent me a picture of it.
It’s 10:30 pm and I’m sitting in my hot tub. My phone is in a clear waterproof bag and I’m sitting on the edge with my feet in, to end my session. Usually I listen to podcasts or my book while enjoying my hot tub, but today I put Greta Van Fleet’s second album on and looked up at the sky. The moon is out and bright enough to give me a shadow.
It’s nice to see the night sky, stars, and moon since my last several hot tubs were all under rain or heavy clouds. As I stared up at it, it dawned on me that it is very unlikely that I was the only person on earth looking at the moon at that moment. How many of ‘us’ were taking a moment to look at the same moon? It’s a simple question with an impossible to know answer.
We all race through this stark, empty, and insignificant part of a truly vast universe on a tiny planet… together. The next time you look up at the moon ask yourself, “Who else might be looking at the moon right now?” Do this and the world seems smaller, more connected.
Yesterday I spent a good part of the day inside my own head. I don’t know if I’m the only one that experiences this sensation (or rather lack of sensation) or if it’s a quirk of the human condition we all experience? I was able to do my job, and I could interact with others, but I felt more like an observer than a participant. I wasn’t fully present.
This isn’t a headspace that I particularly enjoy. It is one where I don’t feel fully engaged in the world. I feel like a visitor in a foreign land, a stranger that vaguely understands my surroundings. I have to work to stay focused on a conversation because my thinking is too loud but not terribly interesting. I feel somewhat disengaged, not just from others but from myself.
Thankfully, the feeling is gone this morning. I don’t like to spend too much time ‘there’. It’s like the world outside my head is a movie that I must watch, but don’t really want to. Reading this now I feel like this should be titled head-case rather than headspace and wonder if someone reading this will recommend psychotherapy… but I also suspect that others will fully understand this experience. Is it really just me, or do others have these moments too?
I imagine for some people this can feel scary. For others, comfortable. For some they can put themselves here, for others they can’t leave. For me it is infrequent, it is not something I can talk my way out of, and it seldom lasts more than a day. It’s just a headspace that I sometimes get into… a mode of observing my own participation in the world around me, yet not feeling present.
Just a quick reminder that while our social circles are very small right now, we can still connect with others online. Make that phone call a video call. Make that video call a 3-way or 4-way conversation.
We need to be thoughtful about how many people we meet face to face with, but that doesn’t limit us from connecting with family and friends online.
Who haven’t you seen in a while that you miss? Well, you can still see them on a screen. You don’t have to tidy the house or add an extra cleaning to the bathroom, just pick up your laptop or phone and make a call. (Ok, maybe comb your hair first 😜.)
We live in an incredibly connected world and we can make distance and time zones disappear with the click of a few buttons. So, who are you missing right now? It’s time to open up your digital bubble!
No matter how long I visit with family, the goodbyes are hard to do. I don’t know if anyone handles them well?
I’m not one that shows my emotions externally much, and this isn’t because I’m holding anything in… I am introverted and I internalize a lot. That doesn’t mean I don’t feel it.
It’s so much easier these days to say goodbye, with instant contact available at any time, but there is something special about giving your parents a hug. Sitting with them. Laughing with them.
