It was the first day of classes in Grade Four and Mrs. Korb asked John Hazel and me to stand up. She wanted us to be “buddies” with the new kid, George Snider. I turned and looked over to the red-faced kid with the bowl hair cut and big teeth. To be fair, he looked…
Today is a milestone birthday. Only birthdays ending in zeros or fives seem to be milestones when your age is in the double digits. But when you get to the triple digits, every birthday is a milestone again, like the first ten years of your life. I still have a ways to go before I…
One of the big takeaways I had from doing the Hamilton Fringe Festival last summer was that marketing is important. Really important. How do you get people to go see your show when there are 30 other shows they can see? And a thousand other reasons for them NOT to see it? And how do…
Sometimes we set a goal for ourselves and we don’t quite make it. Maybe we don’t come anywhere near reaching it. Do we give up? If it’s a worthy goal, you carry on. Or start over. Fall down three times and get up four times. It’s the getting up and retrying or starting over that…
Just do it. Such simple advice, yet so easy to ignore. I’ve only written 5 blog posts in almost two years. It’s not because of a lack of things to write about. Like most writers, I have tons of ideas. But getting the ideas onto the page (or screen) is the challenge. It’s frustrating because…
Last Friday, I stayed after work an extra 45 minutes. I was chatting with my friend, Mike, and the conversation was on a roll. It was one of those conversations that are usually fuelled by alcohol, although this one was not. We talked about life, friends, family, mortality and things we wanted to do “one…
What is the time frame to get over the loss of someone you love? Is there a point where you say it doesn’t hurt anymore? My brother passed away 27 years ago; he was only 22 years old. I often think of the life he missed out living; so many things he never got to…
Tomorrow I start a new job. It’s funny how the working life affects the creative life. For years, I had a routine that seemed to work very well. I would write and/or read on my commute to work, taking tiny steps towards a project. If I had a deadline, I would also do some work…
Here I am trying to get this update in before the month ends… As usual. December was a good month for the Genius Project. It was actually my best year of 2015, which is surprising because it was a very busy month with work and family activities. It just goes to show that committing to…
The temptation was to put off writing my update for November so soon because I had just posted my update for October, but if I’ve learned anything it’s don’t put things off. Time has a way of interfering with the best intentions. Usually when I’m late posting an update, it’s because I’m having a challenging…
peter gruner 