The internet is both a terrible and wonderful place. I’d been in a funk for about a year or so. I hadn’t written much and I finished even less. It was a symptom of course. I’d found myself moving into a bad head-space. Things weren’t great for me. There was a lot of stress in …
Mental wellness plagues society at large. Life is demanding and our resilience is low. The world asks a lot of us. Our families, our friends, our work. And even our passions. We’re inundated with information 24/7 and have become addicted to social media. Mass media thrives on making us be afraid. We accept all this …
We truly live in an age of distraction. I’m young enough to dive headlong into the Internet and social media, yet old enough to pine for a simpler time. As a teenager, it was all about the telephone and how long the cord could be stretched so my parents couldn’t hear my nonsense. For my …
I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by. Douglas Adams I’ve been managing work and people for 20 years. These are things I’ve learned about deadlines and being accountable. They apply equally in the workplace, life and to personal writing projects. I still suck at most of them. #1. …
Art is an interestingly human form of expression. Somewhere between the amygdala and the cortex, our brains can conjure the most amazing things. Artists and artisans alike craft wondrous paintings and creations, vivid with colour and texture. Musicians can bend the ear and evoke such passion in one that it’s hard not to weep. Culinary …
One piece of oft-spoken writing advice is to write every day. Every. Single. Day. Perfecting the craft of grand wordsmithery is not unlike anything else. If you want to master a skill, you have to practice. Period. Doesn’t matter if it’s decorative pastry art, weight lifting, or transanal endoscopic microsurgery. The first cake looks like …
“How do you eat an elephant?” “One bite at a time.” So you’re sitting in front of a computer with a blinking cursor amid a vast emptiness of white. It’s a blank canvas yawning at you, daring you to spoil it with digital ink. Your goal? Write a novel. Seventy-five thousand words. No big deal. …
“Okay, it’s time to write now.” Ten minutes later… “I wonder what’s happening on Facebook…?” We’ve become quite busy in our lives with all the beeps and blips of modern life. We’re driven to get as much done as possible in the shortest amount of time. We squeeze as much as possible …
Populism can be a dangerous thing– where an informed opinion weighs as much as an uninformed one, where truth becomes subjective, and where the only voices heard are rife with vitriol and fear. The rejection of Clinton came from the same place as our own rejection of Harper in favor of Trudeau. Old-school politicking reeks …
‘Tonight will be perfect’, she thought, snipping an errant shoot and placing the bonsai tree on the table’s centre. I will be perfect. She moved gracefully in her crimson kimono, the dragon emblazoned on its back seemingly in flight. Where are my shoes? The fridge glared at her and she retrieved the bottle of olives …
Lucy trembled as Ricky’s fingers moved down the small of her back—not quite touching, but her skin reacting in electric anticipation. She kissed him deeply.
“Two guys walk into a bar; the third one ducks.” No one could tell a joke like Billy. His favourite were ‘dad-jokes’. I always thought he’d be a great dad himself someday. I loved how red he turned as he split a gut laughing. Sometimes he couldn’t even get the joke out. It was contagious. …