Tag Archives: life

Living in renovation chaos

We are close (and yet not close) to having our entire main floor empty… Boxed and tucked away in our basement and garage, to start our renovation of our main floor.


I have no idea if our plan of a kitchen/living room in our basement (with hot plate and laundry sink) while sleeping upstairs is going to work. Will we have to exit the basement door at the back and walk around to the front door to go upstairs? Or will we drag dust and renovation dirtiness with us as we enter and exit the under constitution main floor?

Permits are ready, and we just need a couple inspections and we are under way. We’ll get the last bit of the main floor cleared even though the last 10% feels like it doesn’t end, and then the chaos begins for a planned 5 month reno… which by everyone’s experience with renovations before me actually means seven months.

No matter how I look at it, there will be no ‘normal’ happening in my life for the next half-year. I just need to remember and focus on the end result and the chaos will all be worth it.

One day closer

I am listening to a podcast by Sam Harris titled The Paradox of Death. Paraphrasing him, he says, ‘One thing you can be certain of is that today you are one day closer to death than you were yesterday’. He goes on to say that you can be totally depressed about that thought, or you can turn it around and realize how valuable every moment is.

There is so much we have to be thankful for. So many people we value and appreciate. Do we share (enough) time with them? Do we tell them they are appreciated? Do we worry too much about things that probably won’t ever happen? Do we appreciate the time we have left?

If I were only going to live for 50 more minutes, would the people I leave behind know what I thought of them? If I was going to live for only 50 more days, who would I spend my time with, and why am I not making more of an effort now? And if I lived for 50 more years, would I want to look back and see a life of gratitude or a life of unfilled and unfulfilled moments?

We are all one day closer. We all have the opportunity to cherish the time we have… or squander it.

We live in a time warp

When you are 10, 5 years is half a lifetime. 10 years is half your life at 20, and 20 years is half your life at 40.

By the time you hit 40, your first 20 years are a distant memory, and you remember choice moments, but you don’t remember those years like when you were younger. The distance in time causes you to lose your ability to hold on to old memories. You can’t hold an ever accumulating amount of memories, and so some fade away. So time stretches the past into a distance too far to see everything.

Meanwhile, 1 year at 10 used to be 1/10 of your life. A year at 20 is 1/20th of your life and a year at 40 is 1/40th of your life. Each year, the lengths of a year as compared to the rest of your life diminishes. So time also shrinks the future while it stretches the past. We live in a time warp, and time goes by faster every day.

Sometimes it’s good to reflect on this, if only just to appreciate the fleeting moments in a day, and know that unless we appreciate the time we have, we can only appreciate the memories that we know will fade away.

50 is the new 30

When I was a kid, I’d watch TV and the grandmother in her 60’s would be hobbling with a cane, and grandad wore a hat that only old people wear.

When I was 25, I moved to Vancouver. At the time my dad was 46 or 47 and I used to call him ‘my old man’.

Today my brother-in-law turned 50. He and my sister have always been the young, hip family, and now he has joined us ‘old folks’ in their 50’s. But they are still young at heart… and so are we! Although my hairline might disagree, and I’m now needing glasses to look at my phone and read the already-too-large font, I have a hard time seeing myself as old.

50 is the new 30. Does this sound cliche? Yes. Do I care? No.

My in-laws are celebrating their 60th anniversary in a few days. My wife and I celebrated our 23rd yesterday. As we look at old photos and reminisce, I don’t look back and think the best years have happened already. Life may be short, but that doesn’t mean we can’t fill the time we have left with new adventures, joy, and activities that keep us feeling young.

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Update for those of you that watched Three’s Company growing up: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMR66HGfT/

Family updates

My wife and I are on holidays. This morning I opened my phone and there were two messages on Snapchat. My oldest finished her summer course yesterday and sent us one at 1:30am telling us about a late night visit with a friend, and commenting on our sunset Snapchat that we sent the previous day. My youngest sent one of our cat giving her early morning cuddles before her 5:30am shift.

It’s funny how social media gets a bad wrap, but people don’t spend a lot of time talking about how good it is for connecting family. My sisters and I have never been as connected as we have been since covid started. We began a ‘Sibs’ chat on WhatsApp that we use all the time, and we regularly connect on a group video chat. That never happened before lockdowns.

It takes a few seconds to share a photo and write a quick blurb, or to make a video and share a little slice of life. My daughters are better than my wife and I for also saving the pics and videos before sending them and so we also get ‘1 year ago’ (or longer) memories sent to us as well.

Sharing a little slice of life… that’s exactly what it is. Moments that aren’t focused on projecting an image for social media… not about sharing just the highlights you mostly see on Facebook and Instagram. Instead, just sharing honest moments with the people you love. Messy hair, tiny frustrations, funny or embarrassing incidents, meals, and just average moments when you think of your kids or they think of you.

Without these apps, we would probably not connect as much. They act as easy-to-share tools that invite updates and make us feel closer… Connected, when we can’t physically be together.

When I’m gone

I’m away visiting my parents and had a little getaway planned to meet a buddy and go fishing. Unfortunately one of my uncles passed away from cancer (we knew it was coming), and that changed the plans.

The friend I was meeting replied to my cancellation news saying, “No problem family comes before fishing. Hope we can do it next year if you come down. Talk soon, take care.”

He’s a good enough friend that nothing more needed to be said.

My uncles service, outdoors, at the graveyard, was quaint, and a wonderful tribute to a kind, caring, and unassuming man, who put family above all else. He was given a year and a half to live 3 years ago, and I think it was a relief to both him and the people who cared for him that the suffering that was particularly bad for the last month had ended.

The burial confirmed in my mind that I want to be cremated after I die. I have no desire to hold onto any real estate after I am gone. It sounds crass but I would rather be flushed down the toilet than buried in a plot that takes up space on this planet, when I have no practical use for that space.

I heard once that one of the reasons Disney Land and Disney World check your bag when you enter their theme parks is to check for ashes. People want to have their ashes spread on ‘The happiest place on earth” so frequently that it is an actual concern for them.

We see dead animals all the time. Parts of them are in our freezers, they show up as roadkill, our pets die. When they are gone, it is just their meat and bones that remain, the animal that was ‘is’ no longer around. The same applies to us. It’s funny, I used to think, “Spread my ashes in the ocean… but make sure it’s a warm ocean because I hate the cold.” Now I realize how silly that is. When I’m gone, I’m gone, and what happens to my powdery remains is something I don’t care about.

What I do care about is the life that I have, and people I love, and the things I hope to do before I’m gone.

Standing wave

I remember hearing that on average human cells are replaced every 7-10 years. However, unlike the ship of Theseus not every cell is replaced. Some eye lens cells last a lifetime and there are other cells, such as some in our hearts, that can live for over 50 years. That said, at 53 most of the the cells that made me me when I was born have been replaced, some every couple days, some over years.

Last night coming home from Nanaimo, back to the mainland on the ferry across the Strait of Georgia, I was mesmerized by the standing wave made by the boat. I watched the wake of the boat out over the railing on an opening on the car deck, and stared at the water dancing across this wake. It occurred to me that despite the wake being consistently the same distance from the boat, as I stared at the wake, I was staring at a constant flow of water being replaced by water coming off of the front of the boat. The wave stays the same, but the water is constantly and completely changing.

Inversely, we tend to try to stay the same in an ever-changing world. We develop metaphorical standing waves that treat everything that comes our way the same. We develop patterns of behaviour where we react the same way to people and situations that come our way. Yes, we learn and we grow, but more slowly as we age. We tend to find comfortable, repeatable ways of facing life’s challenges in the same way. Some of us being more like small sail boats that confront every wave a little differently as our boat adjusts, and others more like a massive tanker ship, that keeps the same standing wave in all but the roughest of seas.

What standing waves do we create in our lives? What do we tend to leave in our wake? I’ve met selfish people that leave turmoil and chaos in their wake and go through life selfishly disrupting other people’s wakes, and I’ve met others that are selfless and worry more about helping others with their wakes than worrying about their own. The most dangerous of all are those that think the are the latter but are actually the former… they think they are what makes the seas calm while they themselves are hurricanes, unaware that they are in the calm of the eye of the storm they create, while those around them face the tumultuous winds and rough seas.

We should all think about the wake we create, and we would be advised to keep out of the wake of people who create disruptive waves. And while we slowly replace ourselves with our future selves, we need not create the same old standing waves if they don’t serve us well and move us in a direction we want to go.

Choosing or observing?

How much of our lives are passive?

We observe the world, watching through our eyes, hearing through our ears, feeling through our skin, and tasting in our mouths. Each of these senses giving us feedback about the world around us. But how much time do we spend really choosing what those senses share with us, versus passively accepting what those senses are exposed to?

It is our action or lack of action that determines what our senses observe or endure. Is there a hobby you’ve always wanted to try? A food you’ve always wanted to taste? A place you’ve always wanted to visit? (Maybe somewhere you can walk or hike to, while travel is restricted.)

How much time do we spend being observers of this world, mere victims of our circumstances, versus creators of our world, choosing our path and seeking out new experiences, new things that our senses can take in?

This is a choice. Not realizing this is also a choice.

Longer days

Last night it was still bright out at 8pm. This morning I could see the blue light of the morning, rather than complete darkness, at 5:15am. This is such a welcome shift from the winter gloom that darkens the skies at 4:30pm and doesn’t brighten them again until after 7am. It might still be spring but the feeling of summer is here.

I enjoy waking up to a room lit by natural light. It feels so much more effortless to begin my day. I find myself more eager to get the day started, and find that my eyes widen to take in the light in a way that darkness doesn’t invite.

It’s hard to believe it is almost the end of April. I feel like the year has simultaneously been long and drawn out, while it has also disappeared in the blink of an eye. It has felt long with restrictions being something always on my mind, both at work and in my personal life. Meanwhile, every year seems to go faster, and time slips by without the realization that the days and months are gone.

As the days get longer, I’m left wondering how the years seem shorter? Perhaps it’s because to a 10 year old, 5 years is half a lifetime, and to a 53 year old 5 years isn’t even a 10th of my life. Does time go by faster simply because relative to my age, any significant unit of time represents less of my total life?

Whether that’s the case or not, I’m reminded to value the time I’ve got. To cherish the family and friends I have, and to seize the enjoy the moments that make up my day… starting with the appreciation of natural light helping me to start my day, and reminding me that summer will be here in no time at all.

Reconnecting with friends

Yesterday I was listening to a podcast and there was a poem on Friendship by David Whyte. I shared a minute of it on Twitter and a few other places.

I think that the absolute hardest part of the pandemic has been the challenge of not seeing friends and family. Yes, we can connect digitally, but I miss those face-to-face connections. However, if I’m honest, I am missing an opportunity that I didn’t take full advantage of before the pandemic. I didn’t take enough time to see friends even before restrictions were in place.

Life gets so busy and we all get caught up in our own worlds. This is a lame but honest excuse. We spend our days without filling it with the company we enjoy. We get caught up in routines and recycle our days rather than plan them. I hope to be more intentional when things open up.

I have a buddy that I see and don’t see in waves. Sometimes we get into a rut where we see each other and just sit and chat about life and the awesome history we have together. Sometimes we get bored with that and plan experiences because we want to make new memories rather than rehash the old. Right now, I’d like nothing better than to sit and have a beverage with him and just be in his presence.

Connecting for the sake of connecting… that’s what I’m looking forward to. Hugs, clinking glasses, and sharing time in the presence of friends.