So, it’s my view that we should celebrate democratic accountability without mistaking political change for guaranteed anything. Hope is welcome. Dependence on hope is another matter.

Some mornings, darkness lifts long before the questions do.

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A political earthquake can rearrange the furniture without repairing the house, and the rippling aftershocks can shake anything that’s solid - or not.

It’s the morning after.

Did the world come to an end?

Is the nightmare over?

Has catastrophe been averted, or merely delayed?

Inky darkness greeted me when I started writing this.

The sun hadn’t arrived, and neither had much certainty about what time it was elsewhere.

And what time is it?

Albertans didn’t turn our clocks back last weekend.

Much of the continent did.

We may have stopped changing our clocks, but we haven’t eliminated confusion.

Meanwhile, another morning brings my familiar question:

What’s different today?

For market watchers, political observers, and news junkies, the answer is obvious.

Yesterday’s U.S. midterm elections delivered a remarkable repudiation of Donald Trump, his administration, and Republican control of Congress.

And what a night that was!

Refer a friend

Democrats won both houses of the U.S. Congress, both meeting and exceeding many expectations, as voters sent a strong message of repudiation of not only Trump, but of the Republican Party as it has morphed under Trump’s dominance.

For those of us watching from the north, hoping for some sanity, stability, and predictability in Canada’s relationship with our largest trading partner, that’s encouraging news.

But let’s not confuse a changed political landscape with a changed world.

Trump remains president. His policies haven’t disappeared overnight. Tariffs, trade uncertainty, and the damage already inflicted on relationships won’t vanish because Americans voted differently.

And Congress, however newly constituted, won’t assume its new shape until January.

Still, elections matter. Accountability matters. Checks and balances matter.

Yesterday, American voters demonstrated that political power isn’t a permanent entitlement.

My inky darkness start, surrendered to a bright blue sky, with warmer temperatures on the way.

Is that forecast, a metaphor, or wishful thinking?

All three?

In the fullness of time, we’ll see …

Not offering an apology - just recognizing that my choices, however personal, don’t always affect only me.

Other people’s feelings matter, even when their approval isn’t required. While I don’t necessarily owe someone a detailed accounting of my thinking, I do owe them the courtesy and respect appropriate to whatever relationship we’ve established.

Lifelong habits become so-automatic-ized, it’s easy to avoid questioning what they come at a cost.

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It’s a peculiar kind of negotiation we conduct with ourselves, considering the feelings and opinions of people who haven’t been invited to the table, or once they’re gone, they’re not invited back.

I’ve spent much of my life explaining decisions that were entirely mine to make and owning responsibility for the consequences …

Not because I couldn’t make them.

I’ve rarely had trouble deciding, changing direction, or knowing choices I make create results I alone must own.

It’s what happens afterward that’s got me wrestling.

Recently, I chose not to pursue two connections. One was personal, involving someone new. The other held possibilities for both business and friendship.

Neither advanced as others hoped.

No drama, no wrongdoing, no abandoned commitments.

Yet there I was, mentally rehearsing explanations, as if I owed one …

I didn’t. I don’t. I won’t.

Why?

Somewhere along the road from childhood to adulthood, I apparently learned that disappointing someone meant owing them a justification, explanation or apology. Where did that come from?

And, remarkably, I’ve carried that habit around for decades without seriously questioning myself.

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Historically, I’ve confused courtesy with accountability. Or, I’ve been seeking approval for decisions I already knew someone wouldn’t like.

There’s a distinction worth examining.

Commitments deserve explanations. Integrity sometimes demands them. But a decision that belongs to me doesn’t automatically require anyone’s endorsement, notification or acceptance. It just doesn’t.

Nor does consideration mean eliminating their disappointment.

Still, silence isn’t necessarily unkindness.

Anyone who’s invested time, interest, or emotion may deserve a few thoughtful words, even when no promises were made, because an expectation was created. But whose expectation? Theirs, or mine?

As I review my actions, the question isn’t whether I choose to explain, but why I’m explaining that habitual feeling of responsibility to leave others happy with my choices.

Especially when I get no consideration regarding their choices, because I didn’t expect any.

Have I been offering understanding, or inviting negotiation?

I can respect another person’s feelings without assuming responsibility for reconciling their feelings for them.

Dealing with my own is my job.

I don’t expect to unlearn this old habit overnight.

But it shouldn’t take long …

But to notice isn’t a substitute for knowing - it’s rarely complete or accurate.

We can wonder about someone’s life, actions, point of view without ever inquiring. So, if we then judge what we see or hear, we see based only on our lens of many biases …

Without knowing anything about someone’s economic realities, feelings, relationships, lifestyle, point of view - to not have a clue where their destination might be, their happiness/troubles/hopes.

That’s the opportunity/discipline we get to weigh:

• curiosity without pretending our impression warrants any conclusion

We see people all day long, but how much of what we think we see is actually there?

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We’re all in one place - same city, same Monday morning, entirely different lives passing within a few feet of one another.

Breakfast, anywhere, comes with a side order of people-watching.

A half-block from my office, I sat in a hotel dining room, newspaper/reading glasses, coffee in anticipation of my two poached eggs and order of whole wheat toast (if only it had looked as good as this stock photo), while Monday morning moved around me.

Business travellers juggled calls, emails, coffee, and bites of breakfast.

Couples negotiated going to the buffet (or not), engrossed conversations or silence - easy to observe who seemed to be leading whom.

I notice people.

Curiosity makes me wonder about their stories, especially older couples now that I’m paying more attention to age and stage.

Which begs this question, turned around:

• “What did they see when they looked at me?”

Probably - ‘casually dressed older guy reading, checking his calendar, answering overdue messages, and easing back toward normal after a lousy 10 day cold’.

NO … how could they know any of that?

What might be implied, at most - someone juggling breakfast, newspaper, texting, coffee …

We see one another, but only in fragments.

Refer a friend

That thought followed me back to the office.

Also, on my mind - from last evening, observing online posts of extraordinary images of flash flooding in places I’ve travelled, including Sedona and along Maui’s road to Hana.

Familiar landscapes became something else entirely. Water moved with astonishing force, reminding me how quickly a scene can change while we’re still deciding what we think we’re seeing.

Then I looked out my office window.

A man with a heavily loaded backpack and bicycle was coming up from the ravine. Homeless? I think so; not just travelling light. Heading somewhere ordinary? I don’t know his story, and that’s the point - he’s probably a ‘working poor - homeless person’ on his way to work … but how could I know?

A breakfast table. A bicycle. A business call. A newspaper.

Someone working, resting, surviving, planning.

How do all those lives fit together in the same community, occupying the same close-proximity landscape, all living remarkably different versions of the same Monday morning?

Every chair is occupied by its own yesterday.

But making room is only one part of our choices.

Some opportunities knock lightly. Rarely do they push through a locked door.

Others stand quietly nearby while we’re busy waiting for something that looks more like an opportunity.

These can be few; seldom show up (or maybe we aren’t always tuned in to notice).

Or they can come at us rapid-fire - when time for careful judgement is postponed, because some prompt action is warranted.

Making room sounds like our decision alone. It is, and it isn’t …

Until we notice somebody on the other side of the door is deciding too.

In any room, in any life, in our consciousness, and in our dreams?

Yes.

I’m serious.

We spend a lot of time deciding what, and who, gets admitted.

Ideas, obligations, ambitions, possessions, relationships, opportunities.

Some arrive clearly labelled.

Others show up disguised as inconvenience, bad timing, complexity, or something that looks nothing like the prize we imagined.

So, how do we know?

How do we recognize what matters while it’s sitting quietly in front of us, or hold out because something better might appear tomorrow?

And while we’re deciding whether something deserves room in our lives, there’s another possibility worth noticing.

We may be under consideration too.

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That changes the equation.

Capacity is only one piece.

Worthiness, readiness, and mutual choice are the other half.

Any potential partner, friend, colleague, client, investor, employer, or lover may be asking the same questions.

Do we have enough room, curiosity, courage, patience, imagination, and do we have time for what they might bring?

Timing matters.

We can meet the right person at the wrong moment, or encounter a remarkable opportunity while too distracted to recognize it.

There’s risk in making room - there always is.

Something else may need to move. An old assumption may need to leave.

A comfortable routine may have to surrender its chair.

Another great opportunity or idea might show up tomorrow.

Where does it sit?

Exactly - when there is no room, we can pass on the opportunity, or we can make room.

That’s why I believe there’s always risk in keeping the room full too.

If every chair is occupied by a yesterday, where does a new tomorrow sit?

Maybe the better question isn’t, “Is this good enough for me?”

Maybe it’s, “Am I ready enough for this?”

Making room begins by recognizing we’re making a consequential choice.

That’s before we start choosing anything - knowing that whatever/whoever we’re choosing is also assessing the same opportunity, unless they are ignoring it entirely. Most often, I think, there is a human nature element - of keeping options open, of not making any decision swiftly.

None of this means every knock deserves an open door.

Discernment matters. So do commitments, consequences, and common sense.

Making room isn’t the same as surrendering judgment; sometimes the wisest answer remains no.

The challenge is making sure our NO, when it comes, comes from judgment rather than habit, fear, distraction, or a room we’ve simply forgotten to rearrange.

The challenge too is making sure our YES, when it comes, gets a similar quality of diligence and quality of judgment.

On the other hand, if we look back at all those choices we’ve made - there’s a case to be made for impulsively made quick decisions too.

I’ve not done a thorough audit of all mine, but it seems to me the worst of my choices weren’t hasty, and some of the best ones were.

Sometimes interruptions produce what busy schedules won’t: enough quiet to notice which things we’re wisest to pursue deliberately, and which are still moving simply because we never gave them a STOP signal.

Being stopped isn’t the only way to see what we’ve been carrying - but it has its moments and value beyond expectations.

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This past week of way too much isolated and horizontal time rearranged more than my calendar.

This week, for perhaps the first time, I felt every damn day of every year of being 75.

That sentence bothers me.

Seventy-five has mostly been a number, a math fact I acknowledged this summer without attaching much weight to it.

Then this miserable @%!@_%*ing cold flattened me - for a week and changed my viewing angle.

I went nowhere. Cooked, did laundry, depleted the Kleenex supply, left the bed unmade, and crawled back into it whenever my body negotiated the surrender, ordered Skip the dishes ...

The world, apparently, carried on without me.

Today was supposed to mark my return to normal …

Two alarms, an early start, leaving for the office by dawn.

Not exactly.

I arrived at 10:00.

And by 3:00, while drafting this, I can happily report that it feels, all in, like I’ve got bugger all done …

Well, not quite.

Refer a friend

I moved those mostly unopened file boxes back to the office-office.

My full desk reappeared.

Next week suddenly became less threatening.

More importantly, stillness did some work I hadn’t scheduled.

Plans fell apart, letters still unwritten, postponed conversations, and November suddenly rearranged itself into a useful form of overloaded … but not catastrophic.

What’s real?

What’s wishful thinking?

Which ambitions still deserve my time, money, energy, and enthusiasm?

Which hopes am I carrying mostly because I’ve carried them for so long?

And which conversation simply needs me to stop stalling?

Those aren’t gloomy questions. They’re inventory.

How often have you asked if what you're still carrying is because you’ve carried it a long time?

Maybe getting older isn’t chiefly about having less sand in the egg timer.

It’s becoming less willing to spend what remains unwisely, unproductively, or emotionally gridlocked.

So, yes, I’m moving again. Slowly.

My nose still leaks, my voice sounds/feels like a wood rasp working, but those boxes are here, and the desk is ready.

Tomorrow, I intend to be too.

Must go do some outdoor things while this afternoon warm spell permits.

P.S. I have a “watch this” recommendation. While munching my delivered Royal Pizza last evening, I spent some time on Netflix - I chose to watch Marty, Life Is Short, about Canadian extraordinaire Martin Short. I’ve always respected his prodigious talent, though some of it is not entirely my taste. I knew surprisingly little about him and his family. It’s serious, funny, affectionate - a decidedly feel-good piece and a ‘there is much more substance than I expected’ …

Musings today?

Not much.

I have a new sense of what ‘went viral …’ means.

This is brief - I’m already running hours late today, too much to do to figure out how much I have to do …

Happy Halloween’s eve, everyone …

On the mend,

Mark

P.S. … sanity might return tomorrow, but don’t hold your breath

Real pain deserves to be taken seriously. Real problems deserve fixing. I’m talking about something different: keeping what’s wrong from erasing our ability to see what’s remarkably right.

Maybe our problem isn’t about what’s wrong, but maybe our failure to fully appreciate so much of what we’ve stopped noticing.

Any remarkable life, or any simple one, can always make room for any lousy day.

We too often misjudge just how good we have it, particularly when life and luck fail to deliver the perfect day we had in mind.

Compared with life 100 or 200 years ago, much of what we call ordinary would once have looked miraculous: medicine, mobility, communication, education, food, shelter, choices, and comforts our ancestors could scarcely imagine.

So, what could we possibly complain about?

Plenty, obviously.

Bodies hurt. Plans collapse. Money gets tight. Relationships get complicated. Governments irritate us. Technology misbehaves. Somebody gets in the wrong lane.

Gratitude doesn’t require pretending those things don’t matter.

I’m simply asking - for me, for you - for anyone to remember that an imperfect day can still happen inside an extraordinarily fortunate life.

The danger, I think, is letting dissatisfaction become our default setting.

We notice the delayed flight, not the miracle of flying. We curse traffic without thinking much about the heated vehicle carrying us through it. We complain about slow internet while communicating instantly across thousands of kilometres.

None of that makes today’s problems imaginary, trivial, or undeserving of improvement.

Quite the opposite.

We can want better health care, better government, better relationships, better business outcomes, better communities, and better versions of ourselves while recognizing how much is already working.

Can appreciation and criticism occupy the same chair?

I think they must.

Gratitude isn’t complacency.

Perspective isn’t surrender.

The trick is wanting better without convincing ourselves that everything short of perfect is evidence that the whole thing has failed.

Thinking we know what the finish line might look like might be the evil ingredient in being smart because the enormity of something could so easily discourage us.

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I think we rarely recognize, when we begin something, which small decisions will eventually grow large enough to become part of our lives.

I woke early, still under the weather. Outside, everything was damp from a dusting of snow. Breakfast was leftover pizza. That’s in the Canada Food Guide, right?

The news brought few surprises, so I turned to what was already waiting: more than 600 culled news-feed items for this week’s FACILITYCalgary, plus files, boxes, and unfinished business around my work table.

It’s a familiar mid-week contradiction. I want warmth, rest, and another hour under the covers.

The workload answers, “No, not today.”

And somewhere in that ordinary grind sits a twenty-eight-year story.

FACILITYCalgary began without a twenty-eight-year plan.

It was an “I think I’ll try this” idea, short and self-promotional, sent to a few hundred contacts and prospects.

I had just arrived in June 1999 - still winding up some Edmonton projects and needed to spend some time, effort and money marketing myself, my services, in Calgary. In those days there were some perks… I was with Colliers, it said Sr. VP on my business card, and I had a Bankers’ Hall address—what could go wrong?

Well, the answer was easy - hire someone to create an advertising/introduction piece, approve it, ship/send it and pay the bill. And that’s a one-time effort, cost and waste-basket-filling exercise. It wasn’t that I was being cheap - I was trying to be smart, to not waste time or money and to do something different, better; something nobody else was doing which might help me establish a foothold in a market full of able established competitors.

It started slowly, reactions/mistakes, ruffled feathers, etc.

Then one issue became another.

One conversation became a relationship.

One introduction became a client.

People became colleagues, colleagues became friends, and names on lists became people whose careers, moves, successes, and losses I came to know.

We can calculate printing, deadlines, distribution, revenue, workload, and hours.

What we can’t calculate is accumulation.

If we could see the eventual size of some beginnings, we might calculate too much, become intimidated, and never start.

FACILITYCalgary doesn’t define me, but after twenty-seven years and counting, it has become part of my life’s architecture.

What small “I think I’ll try this” decision are you making now?

What decision are you not making?

“Ready, fire, aim!” - Tom Peters

Sometimes the smallest decision we make is only small on the day we make it.

And I suspect the shortcoming in this for me, and for many, is that we’ve not made enough of those small decisions. Sometimes because they look too hard.

Sometimes they look too unimportant. Sometimes they look like they won’t matter - and they could matter a lot.

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There’s no virtue in continuing something merely because we started it.

Longevity isn’t proof of wisdom as much as it is a measure of stubbornness...

The distinction, I think, is whether the thing keeps producing value, relationships, learning, opportunity, or meaning.

Starting without knowing everything isn’t the same as continuing without questioning anything.

No, they don’t.

Gloomy or not, what determines my day is here, inside — whether I’m smiling or hacking away, trying to talk as little as possible, warm and cozy, thinking I should start buying Halls throat lozenges in wholesale qu…

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That’s slo-mo-paralysis masquerading as intellect + experience = wisdom.

Most daily decisions are as ordinary as ‘which sock goes on first …’

Choices matter more than we might think at first blush …

What if fixing that mistake, if we could turn back time, erased something you’d ne…

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That’s the point, because we treat distance as a simple measurement between two places. Life keeps proving it’s more complicated than that …

Near and far are physical.

Emotional distance has nothing to do with a calculation of physical separation.

Until we look back and realize how much ground has…

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I postponed a trip; civilization carries on.

I think we generally overlook these small decisions because they seem too ordinary to matter. And yet, prior to the decision, life seems in an untenable conflict of impossible logistics.

What consumes enormous amounts of thought/energy doesn’t require a brilliant solution.…

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What if today's better view comes from somewhere in the future?

Plan A may still be right.

Its timing may be wrong.

I’d like to know what it looks like through the opposite end of the telescope.

I think we usually look outward and ahead, as far as the device-assisted eye can see, trying to anticipate consequences, opportunities, obstacles, and destinations…

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I’ve been on both ends of the mental teeter-totter for a while now.

Decisions to make, choices/plans/actions, and in what form/or not, when/how and then acting on those choices.

And what comes next?

And after that?

And next, and the next next …

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Things go well, or not, plans go well, or not, and then what?

Life keeps giving me more questions than answers, more critics and neutral parties, and too few fans and encouragers … but a few is enough.

Isn’t it?

And then.

Then, there is the next thing, the next day, the next idea that goes splat or flat or has no measure of its length or strength or purpose - nor does it need one.

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Twenty-four per cent is not silence to be ignored either.

So, what is the message?

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Democracy settled the question. Ten questions, actually, but we all focused on the primary one. I wonder, why didn’t we just have one question … a OUI v. NON kind of thing. Why wrap and entwine it with nine others?

Politics will now spend months explaining the answer. Actually one question, and nine more offer a snapshot of how Albertans feel about some other issues … the results not binding on anyone, but not for ignoring either.

As I drafted this piece yesterday, it was ‘the morning after’ for me.

I like that phrase. It has so many uses, but I’ll resist those rabbit holes.

I mean Alberta’s referendum and the decision announced late Monday night. I drafted this Tuesday while watching the inevitable Monday-morning quarterbacking.

OK, it was Tuesday, but same same.

Winners proudly explained how decisively they’d won.

Losers proudly explained why they hadn’t really lost.

Could both be true? - where’s a Schrödinger when you need him?

The unofficial result is difficult to misunderstand:

• roughly 76% chose Alberta remaining in Canada

• about 24% chose beginning a legal process toward a binding referendum on separation

That seems like a strong declaration by Albertans that we’re proud citizens of this province within Confederation - continuing as we’ve known it. And by that, I mean ‘the way we’ve known it recently’ v. historically.

Yes, that ‘whole thing’ is done, over. Full stop.

Refer a friend

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Any election decision contains elements that require a flour sifter to tease out the nuances …

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Based on early results seem to be settling into a 75-76% vote on the major question of the day.

Monday’s referendum vote in Alberta will echo through the coming weeks and months, politically, economically, and emotionally. Because polls closed late, results ar…

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Democracy at work, an important vote on the future of Alberta at the same time we gather more information about the horrid tragedy in W…

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Clarity sometimes needs less concentration, not more.

Random thoughts appear randomly.

So we think.

Beyond the well-worn “sleep on it” wisdom championed by Thomas Edison and others who understood that our non-conscious mind keeps working while the rest of us is off duty.

Somehow, it worries/works away at problems, rearranges pieces, tests possibilities, and occasionally hands us an answer we couldn’t see while staring directly at the problem day after day.

Yesterday.

And again today, I was mindlessly moving earth, tools, and assorted outdoor stuff around in the sunshine.

Today was one of those perfect fall days, minus yesterday’s high winds, when physical work seemed to quiet everything else.

And somewhere in that quiet, puzzle pieces were done conspiring - they made better sense now …

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Like people, some circles don’t belong together.

Sometimes the best/better rightish outcomes are: no deal, no compromise, or no further conversation.

Understanding someone else’s interests doesn’t oblige me or anyone …

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I’m not suggesting I should entertain every visitor, for today or any day.

Eventually somebody has to clear the room of these vagrants, so that has to be me.

Thinking, imagining, remembering, and wondering are useful, but choosing is hard work.

Any idea becomes valuable, depending on how I use it, put it to work for me, or give it as inspiration to someone else …

It’s so much better than sitting with these goofy 1/2 baked characters, but unless I clear them out, they’ll just overstay their welcome, and nothing will come of them.

Some visitors inside my head arrive bearing incredible possibilities, or impossible impossibilities.

Others arrive carrying old stories, ones that mean nothing to anyone other than the one person besides me who knows the story or will get a chuckle in their day because I reminded them.

These characters in our life - real ones, and imaginary ones in our brains- add value to our experience, the kind only they could bring.

Some can make us laugh.

Some can make us weep with joy for both what happened and for what never could.

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So, you see, the challenge isn’t having ideas.

It’s deciding which ones get invited to stay.

An idea came into my room.

It captured my attention for a minute, then left.

Another arrived, then another. Before long, my room was full, hardly room to turn around without stepping on an idea/character/story.

I had all kinds. Some were noisy, interrupting everyone. Others sat quietly, waiting to be noticed. A few hid in corners, hoping I’d come looking. One or two strutted around as if they owned the place.

They don’t.

It’s my place, my head they’ve invaded, and they should listen to me.

In this room in my head is where inspiration, cold fries, and dirty coffee mugs hang out, all competing for the same scarce commodity:

• my attention

  • and then your attention

Refer a friend

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