Daily Inspiration: “May you find your comfort in the joy!!!”

“May you find your comfort in the joy!!!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

I am blessed.

I am blessed by family, health, friends, a wonderful career long-standing, and the optimism that I can find deep within my soul when I might most need it.

I always find the Christmas and holiday season to be a wonderful time to reflect on our blessings, and this year I have many.

My wife Christa and I mark 33 years of glorious marriage together, and 35 years overall. She is my rock; I am the scattershot deep thinking ‘futurist’ with big ideas who cannot locate the simplest of things or details of the most important event. Her patience knows no bounds, her love apparently has no boundaries, and her organizational skills are no equal. Each and every day, I marvel at this absolute good fortune that defines my life.

Our year was marked by two significant milestones of joy!

My youngest son Tom married his soulmate and love of his life, Kim.  The wedding, held at our ski club, was glorious – the sky was perfect, the venue fantastic, and the spirit of joy within the room palpable. Kim and Tom have been together since the first year of high school, and Kim has long been so much a part of our family that we are overjoyed at this next step. Tom continues to build his career in wealth management; Kim, as a landscape architect for a major global firm, continues to explore opportunities to help organizations how to rethink their outdoor space. Their commitment to a life of love, life, and adventure was marked by the fact that after the ceremony, they hiked our ski hill, Kim doing so in her wedding dress and flats. If anything defines a life of opportunity, it is to be found in this photo:

My eldest son Willie and his fiance Laura will similarly share their joy when they wed in 2023. This year was marked by the excitement of the planning process and the joy to be found as they spoke of the next phase of their wonderful life together. 2022 finally saw Laura finally fully blossom into her career as a Registered Psychotherapist; no one was harder hit by the pandemic lockdown as much as she was, as right after graduation, her opportunity to elevate the lives of others was dramatically closed shut.  Willie’s year was defined by his relentless effort to take his employer into the modern age of drone-based insight; in that way, so much of what he does parallels my early pioneering years in the technology space.

My working life was marked by the very highs and lows that marked much of the corporate world for the year. Many wonderful moments of sharing my enthusiasm and optimism for the future from the stage, combined with my technical skill in delivering compelling virtual presentations via Zoom. Perhaps there was not a more compelling that captured my strange working life as when I delivered a combined virtual/in-person keynote on a stage in Belgium – with an actual green screen studio built for me on the stage!

I might mark my proudest moment as when I lost a speaking gig – and a significant fee – to a global corporate organization that wanted a keynote on the glorious opportunity to be found in cryptocurrency. My advice was I could give them a sober reality check and temper their expectations – and then lose the gig for doing so. In light of all that transpired this year, I can mark my success by the integrity in my soul and not the dollars in my pocket.

In the midst of all this, I still found moments to upset my sons with goofy little photos like this.

At a personal level, I managed to get in even 100 rounds of golf, marked by some wonderful reunions with old friends:

It was also marked by the opportunity to finally meet in person with some new friends that I met in the virtual world; I aspire to be as cool as my good friend Tom Morley, but I do know we share similar levels of creativity and enthusiasm for helping others to discover the same in their inner soul.

My wife and I moved to a wonderful new home last year in an area east of Toronto, leaving our original home of 33 years. Since we both work at home together – and have done so for 30 years – we did determine to undertake a project to make it our own space, and so our year was marked by a never-ending renovation impacted by, as with everything else – supply chain challenges. It is still not finished!

The most excitement came the day that the pool was lifted into our yard, and I turned it into an epic video product, recorded through seven different cameras.

We could not be happier in our new home; we are closer to our sons, I have a forest in my backyard, and the most delightful of neighbors with whom we can share the most wonderful of moments. I think their lives have been rather upended by our arrival; there is no moment that is without excitement, and so Brian and Heather can always expect something unique to be happening, such as the day the pool was delivered. I grabbed this screenshot the day the pool came in; Heather might not like it, but I will use this as an opportunity to negotiate for additional cookies.

Perhaps most significant, the year was another wonderful year of clarity and purpose; my greatest moments of joy come from my morning walks or 7 AM tee times (I have developed a bit of a reputation at my home club!) as the sun rises in splendor.

And for that, I mark each anniversary each year, finding my comfort in the joy.

Here’s to 2023!