As Shrove Tuesday Transitions into Ash Wednesday........

Tuesday, February 28/17

So I'm not uber religious but do follow certain activities as they come about during the course of the year.

First among them is Ash Wednesday and the concept behind Lent.

Lent is the season in the Christian year when we focus on simple living, fasting, and sacrifice in order to grow closer to God. Lent lasts 40 days, not counting Sunday's and begins on Ash Wednesday and ends on Holy Saturday.

Like a lot of things in my life I've tended to follow this practice more recently than I did when I was a younger man. I think this is part of the whole growing older and looking back on life and wishing for a return to simpler times.

The Tuesday before Ash Wednesday is called Shrove Tuesday, or more commonly Pancake Tuesday. The thought being that with the advent of Ash Wednesday people would feast on Tuesday and reduce the amount of sugars and flour within their homes. I've never been a big Pancake Tuesday guy and still aren't, which is kind of surprising in that I really do like pancakes.

So I was mulling over my sacrifice for this years Lent and have settled upon fast food.

That's right......no fast food between now and Easter Sunday.

This will be a good test of my will as sometimes its so easy to just grab something after a long day at work but I'm determined not to break my Lent sacrifice. It will be both spiritually and physically good for me to keep this vow.

I'm also introducing something new to my Lent this year in that I'm going to take a vow to do something every day versus just giving something up.

Mine will actually be two-fold.

I'm going to post a blog entry every single day of Lent. Now not every posting will be earth shattering but the mere prospect of writing daily will hopefully get me back on track with the blog as it's become so easy to just come home from work and literally collapse on the couch from being so mentally drained and instead of doing something good for myself I vegetate with Moki.

I'm going to say something nice to someone each and every day. This can be as simple as wishing a stranger a good day as we pass each other to a more direct compliment on how nice someone looks.

So there you have it, pretty simple and yet doable if I just put my mind to it.

Do you follow Lent?

What are you giving up for the next 40+ days?

Marcus

Lazy Sunday

Sunday, February 19/17

So today is the hump day of a three day weekend and sort of my lazy day.

Yesterday was about watching my son play in the championship game of his indoor soccer season, they went down 1-0 on a very well executed corner kick play, some errands, and ended with a nice home cooked meal with a glass of wine while watching some Netflix.

I guess that is a pretty common Saturday for me when I'm in my bachelor weekend. I'd love to say I was spending it with a lovely woman getting to know her better but that is going to entail me taking more chances by putting myself out there a bit more.

I'm at peace with myself in terms of my relationship status, for the most part, and like I mentioned before, just going to let things happen as they happen, without putting any pressure on myself anymore.

At my age I'm not entirely sure that love is a real possibility anymore as people do tend to get somewhat set in their ways and less likely to be open to the whole give and take that love requires us to make in order to have things work out.

I thought I was really good at the whole give and take thing but still found myself on the short end of the call so now I'm a bit more wary of things as getting hurt sort of sucks big time. No, this is not me venting or pointing fingers at anyone, far from it as I've owned up to the mistakes I made with C  and tried my best to let things go and move on.

So today I'm doing some early spring cleaning by going through my closet and my son's closet and gathering up those items we don't wear anymore and making a run over to Value Village so someone else can get some nice use out of them.

I'll probably take a first look at my taxes as well and see where I stand on a refund or owing Justin's Liberals some money for them to waste on any number of boondoggles they've come up with, not like they are keeping many of their election promises.

I debated taking a drive out in the country and still might, there's always the option of going to see a movie, or another night in with Moki curled up in my lap and some Netflix. Aren't single guys supposed to lead more interesting lives?

So what is your Sunday looking like?

Marcus

How Ambitious Are You?

Saturday, February 18/17

So there is a dating website where they ask you a series of questions in an attempt to determine what key characteristics would make a good match for you and thus show you profiles that meet these traits.

Now this really shouldn't come as any shock as I don't think there is a dating site/app that doesn't do the same thing in an attempt to set themselves apart from all the others in the marketplace.

But somehow along the way they come up with a determination of one's ambition.

Wait, what?, are you kidding me?

Ambition is defined as "a strong desire to do or to achieve something, typically requiring determination and hard work"

By that definition aren't we all ambitious in one way or another?

Doesn't the mere fact that a person has gone to the effort to create a dating profile signify some type of ambition?

I mean why else go to the bother at all?

Now that we've established, well sort of anyways, that we are all ambitious, lets go a little deeper on the subject and see where it leads us.

I don't see us ending up down the rabbit hole or lost in the woods so I don't think we need to leave a trail of bread crumbs in order to find our way back home.

Am I ambitious?

Yes and no.

Not what you were expecting to hear after the opening to this blog was it?

Well I've said from day one that I'm going to be as honest as I can be as long as it doesn't hurt anyone other than myself, so that is how I view myself, I am ambitious at times and not so much at others, it's probably good to say that my ambition varies depending on things going on in my life.

When I was younger I was AMBITIOUS. Career wise that is, I'd work crazy hours to get things done and show those in charge that I was the one they wanted working on key projects.

But that changed over time, the arrival of my kids has had a huge impact on my life and how I view things, and to a certain extent the level of my ambition when it comes to certain areas of my life.

These days I'd say I'm at a medium to high level of ambition when it comes to my work and probably a low level when it comes to dating.

Work is easy to determine as I'm really enjoying the new job, creating the processes by which we'll be able to meet our reporting requirements to senior management and the board, and clearing a tonne of special projects off my to do list. Once we get a controller on board it will be even better as it means I won't be covering off half that job on a daily basis.

Not entirely sure why I think my dating ambitions are low but if I had to say I'd probably notch it up the season more than anything, I don't know why but dating in the winter is especially hard for me for some reason, mostly because winter dates are usually meet ups for a drink and they can tend to feel like an interview. Summer and Fall dates are way better as we can get outside for an activity, maybe play a round of golf, hit the driving range, walk the canal, hike the Gatineau's, or meet up at the dog park and watch our pooches run around making new friends.

Possibly another reason it's low is my being an introvert makes it so much harder on me to meet people, I'm not the kind of guy who is going to walk up to a woman I find attractive in the produce section at Loblaws and strike up a conversation out of the blue. Oh God how I wish I had that in me to do but the all powerful made me better with the written word than he did with those expressed verbally. Guess I could lug a laptop and portable printer around with me for just those moments but that alone might be enough to send any potential date running for her life..........

So I'll go with this......I am ambitious at times and not so much the rest of the time. Does this hurt me in any way? I'd say yes as it means I might not have my eyes open to possibilities as they cross my path.

But on the other hand I've always been a firm believer that love happens on it's own and nothing you do can speed it up or slow it down in any way.

Love is organic. It is....simple as that........you can help it along by creating profiles that put your appearance out there for public viewing on the off chance someone comes along and says to themselves "Huh, that one looks kind of cute, He can even communicate in complete sentences with words having more than one syllable"

So that is what I've done. I've been ambitious enough to create a profile that offers a glimpse of who I am, a glimpse and nothing more as there is so much to me that I can't put into words, least not words that would truly do me justice.

But I'm not so ambitious that I visit the site daily or tweak said profile that much.

So are you ambitious, and if so at what?

Marcus






 

A Most Interesting Thursday

Thursday, February 16/17

I woke up expecting nothing out of the ordinary to happen and found that to so not be the case in the end.

I've got a post pending that will give a little background on something in this post but didn't want to delay tonight's entry while I finish the other one........it will make sense in a moment, trust me

So my son spent last night at his mom's as she got back from her annual winter getaway on Monday and because this took place over her custody week she didn't get to see too much of our son, me being the all around nice guy that I am, I offered up the opportunity to have him one night this week so she picked Wednesday night.

All that being said to say that I wasn't in my usual rush this morning for that reason as well as the optometrist appointment I had booked for 8:30 this morning.

Upon checking in I was shown back to have my eyes checked and dilated, but before that happened the technician smiled at me and said she loved my blog.

Yes, she came right out and told me that and you can imagine my surprise and slight embarrassment as well. She mentioned she had come across my old dating profile a while back and on it I'd placed a link to the blog, long since taken down so don't bother searching for it, and followed it to see what it was all about.

I sort of laughed and I'm pretty confident I might have blushed a bit too.

The best part came when she told me that reading it made her think about things. I don't think anyone who writes for the public could ask for a better outcome, and this guy was walking on clouds after that.

The last thing that happened to make this one interesting Thursday came about after I'd gotten to work and been toiling away trying to complete the January results binderw.

My ex and I had been texting over the course of the morning about our son and his upcoming trip to Europe, trying to decide how much spending and meal money he needed in Euros and Swiss Francs, who was going to get it, and how much the other would owe for their share.  We are pretty good about sharing the costs of raising that boy, even though we have shared custody with no child support to one another, we still split the major costs equally and do a settlement at month end to make sure things are in balance.

Well around 11:45 my cell pinged I had a new text message so I looked down to see it was from her and had a series of smiling faces....no words, just the smiling emoji's, a lot of them.

I opened up my messages just in time to see a group message from her to me and our kids with the following "Guess who just got accepted to Carleton in his first choice program?"

I let out a whoop and fist pumped the air in excitement, momentarily forgetting where I was and attracted the attention of our CEO as she was walking by our group. She came over and asked what was up and I just smiled and said my son had just been accepted to university.

She told me that was amazing and gave me a quick hug of congratulations. She's kind of a touchy feely boss but means well so we let her get away with it lol

My coworkers all offered me smiles and one asked if those were tears she saw in my eyes........

I did have some and not afraid to admit it, colour me one proud father.

Back in 2015 I commented on how things happen in 3's and here we are in 2017 and I've now had another string of 3 good events.......my grandson, the comment about the blog by Wendy, and now my son getting into University.

My name is Marcus and I'm doing pretty damn good right now :)

Happy Valentines Day

Tuesday, February 14/17

Just a simple entry tonight wishing everyone a Happy Valentine's Day.

I'll be having a nice glass of wine, watching a movie while the snow falls once again outside my front window, and snuggling with a special girl.

Moki!

Ah the life of a single man....it's not all wild weekends, sexy vixens running around, or 3am poker parties.

Anyways, I just wanted to drop by and say hello, I'm doing fine, and should be posting a few blog entries over the next few days.

As always, yours in blogging

Marcus