Quality vs Quantity

I find all too often, our western society is all too focused on how much we have.  "He who dies with the most toys wins!". My blog this week was going to focus on this topic, but as I was second to the family computer tonight, I noticed that someone else...in this house...I won't mention names...blogged on the same topic.  It makes sense as we have been preoccupied as of late, with researching ways to simply things in an increasingly complicated world.  I am going to steer away from the quantity conversation and focus more on the quality aspect of this discussion.
By simplifying things, many of the couples and families we have been following have increased their quality of life.  Focusing on the important things, like spending more time with their kids and sharing adventure and awesome experiences. One father recalled his inspiration to travel fulltime with his family, someone said to him, "at best, you probably only have 18 summers with your kids, you need to make them count!".  To build on what I mentioned in last week's blog, time is fleeting, opportunities will not always present themselves and sometimes you have to make them. 
Now, I don't think you have to sell everything and live on the road to gain a quality of life.  There is a balance, the key is finding your balance of quality vs quantity.

Thanks for reading.

Mike

Impermanence

I had the opportunity this past week to visit my old stomping grounds.  Just a couple of hours to drive around my childhood neighbourhoods where I spent a great deal of my "formidable" years.  This area isn't far away, but I haven't really had the opportunity to go back and visit and reminisce for quite a few years. 
My earliest memories, vague as they are, were from when I was about 3 or 4 and my family moved to Edmonton.  We were one of the first families to move into a mobile home park on the south side.  I remember stacking my toys up against the back fence so I could peer over and watch the tractors directly behind our yard working the farm land, which incidentally is all you could see. One day, I heard the tractors working, so I set to building my perch so I could watch again.  I recall being surprised as this time the tractors were very different from what I had expected. The farm machinery this day were replaced by heavy road construction machines.  The road they were building?  34th Avenue.
I have fond memories of this and many other places in the neighbourhood, but as I toured around being somewhat nostalgic, things were not how I left them. It's funny how a certain part of your brain, thinks things should be EXACTLY the same some 20, 30, or 40 years later.  As I saw many pivotal personal landmarks gone or in major disrepair, I was surprised how much it affected me.
Probably not a good week for this sense of impermanence to be re-enforced given everything else that is going on, but what this did do was serve as a strong reminder that life is short and that we need to live in the moment and (not to sound too cliché) seize the day.
It is important to remember the past (good and bad) but not live in it.  It is important to live in the present while building memories and preparing for the future.

Thanks for reading.

Mike

All work and no play

Well, it is Sunday evening and once again I find myself struggling for a blog topic.  At yesterday's meeting we discussed the common "I don't have anything to blog about" or the struggle with positive versus non positive posts.  It's not that I don't have anything to blog about, it just feels like its the same as the past few weeks, because that is still where my head is at.  And it doesn't feel too positive, not really negative, but not positive.  As I sat here staring at a blank screen, I started laughing.  All I could think of was the scene from the shining when Jack spent weeks staring at his typewriter then started writing his novel, which in the end turned out to be creepy ravings of a mad man. "All work and no play makes jack a dull boy" over a couple thousand times.  Oops, I suppose that is a spoiler alert, but I guess if you haven't seen that movie by now, it's fair game. Anyhoo, not that I want to compare myself to Jack Torrence.

At the end of another week, most of my focus is still with my family, but I'm still trying to figure things out.

Thanks for reading.

Mike