Dear Cali & Macy;

I hope one day when you are all grown up you can see the value in the details of everyday life. That everyday you wake up and have the pursuit of breathing in air like you have never felt it feel coarse through your lungs. When you see the smile on a strangers face that you acknowledge it and return it in full even if you don’t quite feel like it. The reason is that they are contagious and just the simple physical act of your lips raising,will diminish the magnitude of whatever is on your mind.

I hope you never harden or become jaded. Allow the world to enter you at full force and embrace every hurtful lesson that you will endure. It is in these awful situations that you will gain the most value. The most acute pains force the most driven to supersede anything.

I know both of you have the entire spectrum of possibilities in front of you and as your Dad I will do everything in my power to ensure you can see every angle and when you cant i hope you ask for help.

Surround yourself with real people who know your insides and urge you to grow your outsides. They are the ones that will bring the biggest joys to you

The simple act of learning to know when to ask for help has taken me a long time to figure out. It actually has been the hardest thing for me to come to terms with. I could chalk it up to stubbornness or defiance or just plain stupidity but it has in recent years become one of the few things I know now would have helped a whole lot more if I had of known then.

Take your dreams and make them goals because dreams are just that, dreams. Nothing will ever hold you back if your truly believe….
In all of your being that it is meant to happen.

I will
watch and listen and be so proud
So very very proud of everything you will ever do
because nobody
will ever be able to do it your way and that is why you both are the most special people I have ever met.

I love you

I notice the loss factor in full force.

The loss factor is a phenomena that occurs at a unique point in an individuals life when they experience the loss of what was hoped to be, a recognition of sorts, that sometimes there are dissapointments that ruin people and that an erosion of spirit occurs if due diligence is not practiced.

It is a very important part of a persons life to have introspective thought. To reflect on both what is had and what is lost. I believe in the saying you can know not happiness where great sorrow did not accompany it.

The balance of perspectives in ones life which changes with introduction to other people’s thought process and views is what makes the human psyche such a volatile place….an exciting place.

I respect order and organization and understand it’s need but I never lose sight of the fact that it is the spontaneity and energetic carelessness of moments that keeps ambition and drive in me to accomplish more.

I feel great pain and sadness from time to time but I respect that feeling – It is what has made me but I will not succumb to the cycle of apathy and punch card life that some have come to embrace…the loss of time – the loss of friends – the loss of expendable income. That is not what
this is about.

To live is to craft a speech as if you had 2 minutes to tell your lifes’ story with every emotion and urgency that you could muster to a young child and have them be as energized as you still are about what you can do and what you feel in this life.

The Accelerated Loss Factor will never disappear or slow down. It is constant – It rides shotgun to time – As you walk the time line you pick up things and you drop things until you reach the end of your timeline and you have to guage what you kept and what you threw away.

RAGE against you and your kind. Improve it, add something to my country, make me feel like there is worth in you being here other than to poison my lands with the diseases your country carries both physically and socially. You left your country for mine, do not prolong a problem that your culture does not have the intelligence to overcome on my turf.

Get out of my country if you can not better it.

This goes to every Canadian that is fed up with our federal governments lack of control and screening processes.
Are you not tired?
Do you not think to yourself “Stop letting people into our country until we get some control of the people that are inside of it. Mend internally.” Letting in criminals and people that only tax the system helps no one and it sure does not assist the people that are proud to call Canada their home. It embarrasses me to hear all these issues about how our immigration control system is not preventing the fraudulent behavior and the behavior of newly immigrated individuals from many walks of life with evil in mind do what they want with our country. It is time to seriously stop allowing people in and start removing all the people that do not add to this country.

You are new to Canada, prove why you should stay. It is not a right of your s for you to beable to stay here indefinitely.

I have just learned that one of my good friends misses “our time”. Nothing else needed to be said about that – my only response was that

My time is not only mine but my family’s, my wife, my daughters – not to mention the healthy one’s own time – I battle this balance daily. And I lose more than I win – so I am learning.

I have guides for myself – They are painless and yet excruciating some days to fulfill:

• Wake up and be happy that you did – you have a day to add something and possibly make up where you did not the day before.
• Treat people as you expect to be treated - This if put into various situations – is not so simple.
• Live life with passion – If you have no passion they you will not succeed. Point blank.Proven Fact
• Never go to bed mad – Settle it – even if it takes all night.
• Have conviction – Decide and act. Stand up and giv’er. There is nothing worse dealing with someone that can not make a decision or a choice.

All this to say is that one of my most proud friendships fell down into a place where neither of us could really help it until it was ready and – just maybe – maybe – It’s getting its footing back. We will see.

You should always specialize in this order no matter your outlook on life.

1. wife
2. kids
3. friends
4. family

Choose your wife for a reason. She is your other, your opposite, your similar state of existence.

Kids are the most special thing on the planet. I love life more every day and get more and more sad on how things unfold for the very reason in that they will be brought up by a world that is losing its physical borders and will not have tolerance for the negative outlooks due to racism.

We are lovers of others

Keep up the belief and it will change.

Friends you have chosen and have added to your character, through experiences have built your life.

Family you are raised to adapt to. They are your security while developing in an utterly unique way different from any other nucleus. The probability of things going right are so slim and yet most people are thankful to have that day to contemplate. Try to have days, where no matter your situation or obligation that you can detach, unplug and tune out – and talk to yourself.

This is a thank you letter to Ben Harper and David Worthington. David Worthington is a great friend of mine who works for EMI Canada. He is by all counts one of my best friends and a stand up individual who believes in music for what it is, the sounds of people’s souls.

EMI sponsored a night at The Rehearsal Hall in Toronto, a special presentation for Bravo Television with Ben Harper on April 09 2006. It was an industry only event with invited friends and I was one of the lucky ones to have been invited. I believe the crowd was no more than 60 people and I was blown away by both the sound of the acoustics and Ben Harper’s magnetism. He played an incredible acoustic set with only his friend to accompany him. I have been an avid fan of Ben Harper for years ever since a friend at Bishop’s University in Lennoxville Quebec, Canada – by the name of Alistair Heath passed me his second CD “Welcome to The Cruel World”. Thank you Alistair – I will never forget that gesture.

If you have ever listened to an album, truly listened to it back to back uninterrupted with no judgement before then you can fully understand. When I say that this and many albums afterwards have deeply affected me it is not an exaggeration. Ben Harper’s music provides me a sense of great appreciation for a band and a person that can voluntarily share so much by putting thought to song.

This night was no different from any time I have seen him live.

As he played time stood still and when he talked he talked like any of of us would in the same situation. He speaks with truth and he feels with his heart and for that I am truly thankful

.

To David Worthington – I can not thank you enough. The gift of sharing music crosses the boundaries of copyright and ownership and dollars and corporations that promote the artist. It is about the gift of giving to someone an outlet or voice that they may of had, have or wish to have and I can only speak for myself but I truly believe that when Ben Harper plays music the world hears his songs.

“A large double double”.

Since January 1st of 2006 I have altered a couple things in my order preference. I have since altered my order to

“A large decaffienated double cream”

This has greatly increased my appreciation for the “taste” of the coffee. I am a true connoisseur. I bought the farm. I love coffee. I love Tim Horton’s but I also appreciate that the coffees of the world have multiple flavours and I love choice and am an advocate of choice of all kinds for all things.

Today I dropped the issues and entered a Starbucks in Oakville, Ontario – my first North American Starbucks. I will admit, I felt out of place and utterly lost – but I liked it. It has a very different feel and you can bet it’s done on purpose. It was warmer – more consumer oriented – more specialized and customizable for the purchaser. They have noted what it is that the new caffeine generation wants and executed on their findings. The staff was more than kind. They were inviting and pleasant with energy to boot! The employee’s sensed my hesitation (I didn’t even know the price) as a common first timer’s anxiety to a different environment which they went out of their way to ease and offered me a killer coffee – on the house.

I know that the coffee houses of old would be proud, that the true lover of coffee has a place to call home – don’t get me wrong I’m still down with the Horton’s, it’s just, all beans are different and every once in awhile it takes something like that to remember why you started drinking it in the first place.