The Edge of Civilization

The Edge of Service

Happy Hump day from the Edge -  hope all your Hump-related activities go as intended.

Just a quick heads up to my readers. I will be away from my computer  and out of the service area for the first week or so of February. Turns out I have to get a job to support my new writing career - not an uncommon story from what I can gather - but hardly significant. I'm still trying to figure out if its: "hi my name is Sam what can I get for you today" or "Our specials are ... and I'l be your server Sam."

I should be able to figure this out.

Since I live approximately two and a half hours from the middle of nowhere internet service can be tricky.

The picture to the above and to the right is my Wife - Wenona walking along the Chilcotin Sand Dunes in Central British Columbia. Yes its as cool as it looks - and yes eventually I stopped the truck and let her in.

"No Cell Phones Dude"

Once I am done paying my dues, so to speak, I will be back - Edgy, Edgey and Authentic and ready to Post up a storm. Until then, keep your stick on the ice, your heads up and don't take any wooden nickels... or something like that.

I alway wonder if that was some kind of depression era problem - people getting convinced to use wooden nickels? Was this a WWII response to lack of Alloys for minting the 5 cent piece? For the record I would prefer to have a wooden nickel than a wooden leg or a wooden personality. At my age "wood", in general, is considered a good thing.

Respectfully, from the Edge.

The Edge of 2013

2012 can kiss my ass. 2012 will always be the year I lost a bitter custody battle with my ex over my 11 year-old daughter - Emma. It was like losing my best friend and was the hardest thing I've had to face in my life.

I have referred to Emma in my posts but not the loss of custody. I was processing and still very much on the Edge of Grief. Now that the dust has settled, and I am well into the calm waters of acceptance, I don't mind sharing it with you folks. This Blog is about my experiences - good and bad - and how they have shaped my life and made me a better man. If I am not willing to put myself out there, to show some vulnerability, then I might as well write about someone else's life. 

Adversity has always been my greatest teacher. If not for the challenges in my life I would never have had to engage in the soul searching, the taking stock and renovations in my life that I have. I would never have learned to cherish the good times if it wasn't for the bad. This was no exception.

For years I have been bordering on burn-out from being a workaholic. I have been saying, "this year I'm taking some time off to rest." I have talked about taking up creative writing and developing my passions. I have told my family that I would spend more time with them and not be so serious and tense. But it was always tomorrow.

It was the loss of custody that pushed me to make these things happen. I took six months off work that I never would have of my own volition. I took care of some health issues I had been neglecting. I reviewed the business model of our small consulting firm with my wife and saw how we could do more with less. I started writing. 2012 was also the year my youngest daughter Abigail was born and the year I fell in love with my Wife again.

I took time to hang out with my Wife when she was pregnant rather than working fourteen hours a day. I have been involved in the early raising of Abigail and watched all the early development phases that I missed while I slowly worked myself to death during the other two pregnancies. I came to appreciate how fortunate I really am and how abundantly I live. My relationship with  my Wife and daughters, including Emma, got broader and deeper. I even came to resolve some long standing tensions with my own parents.

So since all these wonderful things are happening due to the adversity and personal anguish resulting from loss of custody I guess I should be grateful for 2012 - right? NOPE! I am a child of the Eighties. I grew up on ACDC, Ozzy Osborne and Judas Priest's, not Bob Dillan, James Taylor and most definitely NOT Kurt Cobain. You see, I get stronger and my life gets better in spite of adversity - not because of it. So ya - 2012 can kiss my ass and 2013 here I come :)

Happy New Year, From the Edge.

The Edge of the Humans

I never know which one of my posts is going to get a good reaction. This just proves that I really have no idea what is going on with the Humans. While I do recognise that we are all part of the same basic species, I feel like m interactions are part of some complex experiment. I am constantly surprised and baffled by Human behaviour. 

I have managed to identify two subsets of the Humans through my observations:

1. Easy-to-be-around-people, and 

2. Hard-to-be-around-people.

I am not sure exactly what it is about hard-to-be-around-people, but these are the people who make me tired when I am around them. They are the negative people who always have a reason why you shouldn't do something, why it won't work or what is wrong with you.  They are spirit-suckers who seem to stick a straw right into my chest and suck the life right out of me.  In their most extreme form they offer nothing useful, they produce nothing and even worse they make it hard for anyone else to produce anything.

The easy-to-be-around-people are the opposite. They are almost always content and always have a word of encouragement. They find the positive in any situation, rarely find fault in others and I feel energised and creative when I'm around them.  My wife is one of these people - she makes me a better person by osmosis because she is so easy to be around.

I don't really have much more to say about that except that I do have a choice, for the most part, as to who I allow into my life. Today I chose to have the positive people around me and I also choose to be one to those people. I don't hold any grudges against the hard-to-be-around-people life is just too damn short to waste on them. The good news is that we all have a choice to be easy-to-be-around-people. So over the Christmas Season take the time to hold the door open for an elder, give you seat up to someone who needs it more than you, say thank-you, clean up a mess you didn't make or have a real conversation with a little kid. If someone does something you like - tell them. What do you have to loose? 

Respectfully, from the Edge