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.
Last night 6 of us went to see Moulin Rouge, and we made a weekend of it downtown. The show was wonderful, and the lead singer was absolutely sensational. There were no weak performances, and yet the lead outshined everyone. It’s just amazing to see someone passionately performing at the top of their game… and she was the player of the night.
On top of that we all stayed downtown for the weekend. A staycation in Vancouver, a little rest & relaxation in an otherwise busy month. Just had a hot tub with the boys, and we’ll all be heading to dinner in a couple hours.
A fun weekend escape… and there’s still more to come.
We’ve fully reached the stage of finding reasons to go rather than finding excuses not to. I’m not available this weekend to do our weekly walk up the Coquitlam Crunch, so Dave and I met in darkness at 6am to start our trek up the hill.
I’d say we reached this stage a full year ago. It was 2025 that we went from our commitment to doing the climb at least 40 times a year, matching the weeks of a school year, to ensuring we never missed a week. This wasn’t a voiced decision, it’s one we just found ourselves doing.
Now it’s something we just do… And yet it’s a lot more than that!
It’s a chance to to talk, to rant, to seek advice, to share, to listen, to connect.
It’s a commitment to a friend.
We now regularly meet at 6am for workouts anyway, and we often do multiple crunches at a time training for Everesting the Crunch, so to meet on a cold Thursday morning and just go up and down the Crunch once, actually feels like a rest day.
I heard this phrase and it really struck a chord with me:
“Accept people as they are, but place them where they belong.”
There are 2 really big ideas here.
First, we are often quick to want people to change, and the disparity between who people are and who we want people to become is often too large of a gap. Step one is accepting people for who they are.
The next step is a bit more challenging. We often spend way too much time on people that are not worth our time. We don’t ‘put people where they belong’. We take amazing people for granted and we focus too much attention on people who aren’t worth our time.
The task sounds simple: accept people for who they are, then place them in your life accordingly.
There are people who would do anything in the world for you. And people who you in turn would do anything for. When that’s the same person, well then you need to prioritize your connection to that person. They deserve a special place in your heart and in your life. They deserve your attention and time. Not the person that cut you off in traffic, not the annoying co-worker, not the friend in need that is never there when you are in need.
“Accept people as they are, but place them where they belong.”
I spent the afternoon with my mom, her sister, my wife and my kids. My aunt had us in stitches. It was wonderful having a good belly laugh. My favourite line from my auntie. “I like living by myself. I’m fine to talk to myself, I don’t need anybody else. It’s only a problem if I hear voices talking back, other than that, I’m good.”
Before this, I spent most of the day with an old friend. I can’t travel back home to my mom and not find time to see my buddy.
It’s just wonderful to realize that what I value most are my family and friends. Give me this, and my health, and I really don’t need much else from this world.
Too many people try to go solo when they have a community of support around them. There are more people around you willing to help you than you think. You just need to ask… and that’s the problem. The help isn’t always offered.
The people who can be most helpful would be glad to help if they just knew you needed help. The trick is to make contact and be clear about what you are hoping for.
There’s a difference between: “Do you have time to…?” And, “I really need you to help me right now.”
There’s a difference between: “Hey, just calling to say hi.” And, “I really needed a friend I could talk to right now.”
Too many times in my career, and in my personal life, I only realized after the fact that I could have gotten so much more support to get over a rough patch than I actually got, more than I asked for… only because I didn’t know how to ask, or that I could ask.
Sometimes I’ve thought I’d asked, but it was a soft ask, a sort of ‘help would be nice’ kind of ask rather than an, ‘I really need help’ kind of ask.
I get it, it would be great to have people realize that the soft ask wasn’t just an ask but a need. The thing is, everyone is knee deep in their own stuff and the soft ask can easily be missed. So don’t assume your soft ask is enough.
If you need help be clear, be blunt, and ask. It’s hard to do the hard ask… just do it anyway!
There is a saying that I love, which goes like this:
‘You are the average of the people you spend the most time with.’
I’ve seen it over and over again at school. Take a kid who’s floundering, put them in a friend group that is doing well, and suddenly that kid is also doing well. Inversely, put a smart, good kid in a friend group with kids that don’t care about school, and watch that kid’s marks (and attitude) fall.
Entire classes can be influenced this way and in a small community minded school, we’ve seen how a culture of getting work done and showing pride in caring for our school and our community has been contagious.
Going back to the quote, it’s mathematically impossible that everyone could be the average of the 5 people around them… but there is no doubt that those around you have tremendous influence regarding how you act, and what you value. And the power in the quote is as much about what you do to that average as it is what others do to that average.
Be someone who increases the average. Be someone who finds ways to make the people you surround yourself with better. This simple act will increase the average for everyone and generate a positive feedback loop. After a while, you and your friends will never be just average again.
We didn’t know back in January 2021 that we would still be at it 200 crunches later, but here we are! Dave Sands and I were just looking for a reason to get together during Covid. We started back at school after a Christmas break locked into our family bubble, not seeing any friends socially. The rules did allow for meeting outdoors and so we decided to walk the Coquitlam Crunch together.
We met on a Friday after work, did the crunch, had a beverage sitting 6 feet apart on the parking lot railing, then headed home in separate cars. It felt so good to actually do something with a friend, that we planned to meet the following week. And a new habit was formed.
Starting our next school year, we decided that we would commit to at least 40 crunches a year, basically one crunch for every week of school. And we’ve stuck to this ever since. In fact we are boosting our average up above 42 by the end of this year.
Early on, Friday after work proved too hard to keep up and so we switched it up and met Saturday morning. A new after crunch ritual of coffee replaced the Friday night beverage. Our Crunch walk is something Dave and I often bend over backwards to make work. Last weekends Dave was heading out of town for the weekend and so we went on Thursday after school. The start of this weekend I was out of town so we did our crunch early this holiday Monday. In fact the reason we’re boosting our average by 2 days is because this year I think we only missed one week.
We’ve crunched in sleet, snow, and rain. We’ve started it in early morning darkness, we’ve ended in early winter darkness. In fact, in almost 5 years there is only one absolutely down pouring miserable day that we got to the crunch and both of us were not up to facing the weather. Besides that one time, we’ve faced some awful weather and still decided to commit to heading up and down this hill.
Today was a weighted vest day, and we were planning on doing it twice last week but my back wasn’t up to it after having IMS that day, so we just did one. So, we combined these two challenges and we did the double with weighted vests today. We did crunch number 199 and number 200 this morning, on our first ever double counted day. We’ve done a couple doubles before, not counting them as separate, but we figure if we are doing complete doubles, they should count as two!
Yes, this is great exercise. Yes, it’s an awesome habit to keep. But the real value in doing this activity 200 times is the connection to my buddy Dave. I can’t describe how mentally and emotionally rewarding it is to have this weekly connection to a friend. Not many people get to see a best friend a guaranteed 40+ times a year in addition to other meetings, plans and connections. We both cherish this time so much that we can’t think of valid excuses to not meet up, and we will consistently make up for lost opportunities when life gets in the way of us meeting on a Saturday.
So, we’ll just keep going, week after week, and our Coquitlam Crunch adventures are to be continued… starting again next week!
It’s amazing how good conversations with people you love and care about can help you through a day. It reinforces that we are social beings and that we require connections to sustain us.
I am someone who appreciates my alone time. I like solitude, and I’m much more of an introvert than people might think I am. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that I value and appreciate time with family and friends. Liking solitude isn’t contradictory to enjoying rich conversations. Being an introvert doesn’t mean that I don’t want to build strong connections to others, I’d just rather not do so in larger social situations.
I have a friend who can go into any social situation, make connections with people he just met, and have a rich conversation that go well beyond discussing the weather, occupations, and general family updates. He can find common ground and start to instantly develop rapport and develop a relationship with people he barely knows in minutes. That’s not me. In a large setting, I’d rather find one person I’m comfortable with, maybe two people, and have a more intimate conversation rather than sharing things in a group. Both approaches are valid, they are just different. Both are about the same thing, which is making and maintaining connections to others.
At one point I used to have these kind of rich conversations on Twitter. I found like-minded people who I’d connect with and then we’d slide into direct messages and get to know each other. I’d go to conferences and connect to people I had never met face-to-face, and I’d feel like I already knew them. I no longer do that with social media. Now I use social media to connect to people in my life already, as a means to add one more layer of connection. My daughters get sent different things than my wife, which is different from what I share with my best friend, which is different from what I share with my uncle, and again different from things I share with my mom and sisters. In each case adding another avenue to build connections I already have.
Then there are text messages, phone calls, FaceTime, and even Zoom. In each case I’m building up a connection to keep the conversation going with people I care about. I’m looking to develop richer connections, richer conversations… essential to maintaining my wellbeing and my bonds that sustain me when I can’t always see people in person.
My buddy Dave has been on an amazing fitness journey, and has lost a bunch of weight while also building muscle. I’ve been on a journey to add healthy weight, lowering my percent body fat, while gaining muscle. At the start of this year we joked that we were going to meet in the middle, with his weight going down and mine going up.
Before heading to work this morning we went to the gym and worked out together. Then we took turns stepping on the scale. I weighed over a pound more than him! We did it, we met in the middle. Well, almost in the middle… Dave covered a bit more of the gap. Still, this wasn’t a real goal, just lofty target we put out into the universe. Now we are there. Next steps are for both of us to make gains together.
A buddy of mine from Ontario is in town for a couple days. He texted me saying he had Thursday morning available. The bad news, I have a 9:30am appointment. The good news, I get up at 5am to start my morning routine and he is on Ontario time so he’ll be up early too, here on the west coast.
So I’m meeting him downtown at a restaurant that opens at 7am. We’ll have almost an hour and a half together, then I’ll drive back uptown to go to my meeting. Easy. Sure, I’ll miss a workout, but I haven’t missed one this week and so I’m due anyway.
The most important thing is that I get to spend precious time with a friend that I rarely get to see. That doesn’t happen often and so the fact that I’ll spend about the same amount of time driving as I will with him doesn’t matter. Too often we bend over backwards to make work commitments and don’t think twice about cancelling or postponing opportunities for personal commitments.
Not me. Not today. Today I get to make the visit happen. Is it a bit rushed. Yes, but it’s short notice and that happens. The point is that it’s important to make time for good friends… especially those that we don’t get to see all that often.
