Happy Sunday,I’ve been shutting the windows at night. All of them. It started as a summer thing. Keep the heat out in the morning. But I brought it forward this year for a different reason. Snow. If snow stays behind the blinds, the day starts clean. That’s the game. So before bed, I’ll take one last look outside. See the street lights. Peace and quiet. Then I close it out. In the morning, I let the day start on a neutral note. Then I crack the shutter for a peek. Sun’s out, great. Feels like a win. The blinds open, and the day comes in. Snow, I stay shuttered another half hour. Second cup of coffee. Wait to let in the day. Delay the disappointment. Works better than it should. It’s a small thing. Silly. But it works. I’m choosing what gets to me first. The rest of the day comes in raw. I check the phone before my eyes are properly open. Emails before coffee. Whatever’s there sets the tone before I do. I should be drawing the line in those places too (working on it). Maybe I’m calibrating. Pacing the day. Or maybe I’m just worse at being a person when the day starts before I do. Whatever it is, I’m chasing it more than catching it. Windows are easy to shut. Everything else takes more work. You decide what you let in, and when. The weather stays the weather. You choose the first move. Good riddance to April.
April in 3 snapshots 🍫 Family Easter in central AB — Two hours to Ponoka, where the extended family rented a church hall for Easter. Four generations under one roof. Chocolates, the food spread, cousins, aunts, and uncles I hadn’t seen in years. Showing up is the entrance fee. Everything after that comes free. 🏆 Pre-playoff ritual — Met Da Bois in Deer Run for the annual auction draft. Set amount of “cash”, bid on players, stop at ten. Diverse set of strategies. Bidding wars on guys already out in round 1. A few years deep on this one. The draft’s a good alibi. Sports keep finding ways to put us in the same room. 📝 Sunday afternoon life Q&A — Once a year, Sarah writes a list of questions. Home, career, future, life. We answer separately, then come together to compare. It gets heavy. Sometimes tense. The conversation moves past what hides behind ‘how was your day’. Left to me, I’d talk around them forever.
3 Lessons Learned I. Start projects small enough to finish. Big ideas are easy to start and hard to finish. The enthusiasm leaks out. Creative projects are worse because finishing never feels final. There’s always one more pass. Size the work with finishing fatigue in mind. Small enough to hit a checkpoint, often enough to compound. II. We are slaves to our loops. You make the plans. Someone else lives them. Decisions get made by the autopilot you, running patterns you didn’t pick. They’re shaping your day before you wake up to them. Don’t try to reject the loops. Just see them. You can’t change a loop you won’t look at. III. Excess creeps in quietly. Lifestyle inflation doesn’t arrive in one big move. It’s a nicer dinner. One more subscription. A bit of ‘whatever’ here and there. It adds up in the background until you finally look. By then, it feels normal. What you stop noticing becomes the floor.
3 fun things to check out
I’ll leave you with a quote 🤔 “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson Until next time, Scotty
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