“You’re either making excuses or you’re making it happen”

I’ll try not to get too Billy Graham** on you, but I feel like I need to preach a little for a minute:

Cell phones, schedules, deadlines, daytimers, traffic, rush hour, paychecks, “the Man”, labels, $3000 bathtubs, square footage, payment plans, interest-free loans, 12-page essays, $4 coffees, umbrellas, dark skies, dark clothing, dark expressions, credit cards, debit cards, endless discussions of plastic, blank-eyed stares, people in a daze, noise, so much noise, automated answering machines, rain rain rain, the cranky lonely isolation only a city can provide, broken dreams, unlived lives, wishes put aside for another day, and “Tell Me Allllllll About It!”.

These are the things that I am afraid of.

Don’t get me wrong — I am happy here. I love Vancouver on a sunny afternoon, being back in the swing of running a business and working for myself, drinking coffee and watching the world go by, rediscovering yoga and healthy foods, enjoying every moment with my family, my friends, my people.

But it’s the things I’m afraid of that get me really fired up. Get me hustling (a good word, I think). Get me dreaming and scheming. Get me planning. Get me going.

The question, in my mind, is pretty simple: “How do I earn time efficiently?”

And then, much more interestingly, “How would I most like to spend that time?”

(Note: I’ve had little diagram for a long time. I’m still not sure I even fully understand it — I just know that when I realised I was spending time to buy time, and losing time in the process, something seemed whacked.)

The moral to this story?

Life life with brio*.

———————————–

*Brio is “the quality of being spirited, vigorous, and alive”

**I once watched a very good movie that was sponsored by Billy Graham (the evangelist). At the end of the movie, Billy Graham came on TV and urged the viewers to “donate whatever you can, even if it’s only a dollar”. So, feeling emotional after the movie and urged by Billy himself, I sent a loonie ($1) to the Billy Graham Foundation… and mailed it with my Grandma’s return address.

I really didn’t think anything would come of it, but since that day my poor Grandma has been just inundated with Billy Graham promotional material, flyers and letters. I definitely got my $1 worth.