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Emergence of the monster
Recently, a really nasty Katherine emerged. And frankly, I really don’t like her very much. I won’t “dish” too much about work in a public forum, but it’s no surprise to anyone who knows me that the company I work for has had a few “interesting” years. From some difficult major projects to being acquired by another company which immediately faced some ethics issues, and from building the branding for the new entity to a strike by our unionized workers, saying there have been challenges is certainly not an understatement. We’ve all been working flat out for a long, long… Read more…
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The circle of life breaks down
I’m lucky enough to have a home that backs onto a small piece of parkland that is full of trees, brush and wildlife. Every spring, we watch the squirrels race around with spring fever. The rabbits scampering about around looking for tender new shoots to munch on. The birds flying across the yard with bits of twigs, last year’s now-brown lily leaves and twine in their beaks as they busily construct their own home for their coming offspring. This spring, we’d been enjoying a pair of robins – typical harbinger of the season – who built a nest just outside… Read more…
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Rekindle – or shelve – the dreams of youth?
Ah, youthful dreams. Our whole live are ahead of us. We haven’t had to make choices that narrow the field, so the sky is the limit in terms of what we might be and do…. If you reader my blog regularly, you probably know that I spent the last year of my high school days living in Istanbul and that I fell in love with the city and its people. Of course, those exchange years come with an end date, and I knew I had to come home at the end of it, despite how difficult that was. I had… Read more…
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Finding role models in a sea of scandal
As the latest inevitable next news story about Toronto’s beleaguered mayor, Rob Ford plays out, I wonder what kind of role models today’s youth have to look up to. Television, radio, newspapers and the internet provide an endless stream of coverage of disgraced politicians, athletes and businesspeople. Poor decision-making, judgement lapses and bad choices almost seem to be de rigueur. Wars are fought in the name of religion, military invasions change innocent people’s citizenship in an instant and elections are fraught with charges of vote-tampering. The natural cynicism of teens feeds on this kind of negativity and there seems to… Read more…
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My only A+
I’m one 36 percent of Canadians with type A+ blood. And while that’s a pretty common blood type, it’s still one that that gets asked for on a regular basis. Back in university, I first donated blood one Valentine’s Day – there was a cute promotion that asked you to come in and donate with the one you loved, so we did. But for some reason, I never went back. That is, until a couple of years ago. Canadian Blood Services says that approximately every minute of every day, someone in Canada needs blood. In fact, according to a recent poll,… Read more…
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Lament for innocence lost
Canada lost a little bit of her innocence this week. On two separate occasions in just three days, in two provinces, two military men, two lives taken. Add to that our Parliament Buildings breached, guns fired, people injured and a gunman shot and killed. Were they related? Were they related to Canada’s recent decision to join the international coalition launching air strikes against Islamic State militants? Homegrown extremists is a new phenomenon here. Or was today an unfortunate copycat by someone with a mental illness?I don’t want to jump to conclusions, as there is much yet to uncover. I’m sure… Read more…
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Living safely in the shallows: What’s the cost?
I’ve been thinking recently about relationships and musing about how the advent of social media has affected them. Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and others have all it possible to peek into people’s lives; to reconnect, however briefly with people we left behind. In years gone past, you would simply move on and occasionally wonder, ‘‘what ever happened to….’’. So we have hundreds of virtual friends, instead of a handful of “in real life” ones. But are we trading shallow – and potentially easier – online friendships for deeper, more difficult ones? And in doing so, are we unintentionally cutting ourselves off… Read more…
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Pop culture psychology
“Do you know who you are? Do you understand what has happened to you? Do you want to live this way?” If you’re a lover of Thursday night TV, you’ll recognize that line from Shonda Rhimes’ Grey’s Anatomy, just a few weeks ago. As crazy as it sounds, those words from character Dr. Cristina Yang resonated with me, as I journey through figuring out what’s next for me. When you’re a young professional, you define yourself by your career. You know who you are, you likely have clear and maybe goals. You feel you have lots of time to accomplish them… Read more…
