Alberta Seperation Anxiety

Alberta separatists are easily manipulated, whiny losers who only understand an ego-centrist level of national politics and are completely (and most of the time wilfully) ignorant on a global scale. 

It is not OK to rob our future generations with your radical fringe opinions. Not that you could anyways, as there are enough sane people in this province and country to keep your half-witted ideas on the fringes, where they belong. 

Not only is what you believe destructive and harmful in a general sense, it is locally, globally, and historically dangerous to Albertans, Canadians and the world. 

Separatists also have no idea the absolute horror show and pain that separation would cause the lives of Albertans. If you think we would keep our pensions and passports, you are insane. If you think we would take all of Alberta with us, you are delusional. How do you think trade with Canada will go after leaving the federation? Being a landlocked country would handicap our import/export options. If you think life would be better under an American regime (especially a Trump-led USA), you are dangerously wrong there as well. We would essentially become Puerto Rico north. All of these separation ideas are half-baked and contain high doses of food poisoning. It would not end well. 

And all because what? You believe the federal government hates you like Danielle Smith is telling you? Well it's certainly convenient that she has the feds to blame when she is trying to cover up the blatant corruption scandal she doesn't want us to look at. By the way, Stephen Harper and Jason Kenney helped write the damn amendment to the equalization schedule that you morons are so up in arms about anyways. As far as I can see, conservatives are their own worst enemy. Believe what you want just don't make it my problem or deny my child his future for your immature and idiotic schemes. 

Thankfully we put an adult in charge that has demonstrated experience in the exact mandate he was elected on, guiding a nation through an incredibly turbulent economic uncertainty. 

Many would have voted for Carney whether he ran liberal or conservative and he could have ran either. Although the vote was as much for him as it was to not to send a lifelong libertarian to go south and bend the knee to Trump for three more years, dismantling our nation to the most globally economic destructive government the world has seen since WW2. 

But tell me again how you voted tribal you absolute ignoramus ass hats. Get a grip.

 

5. To my son: Random Access Memories (Desiderata)

Alright, this one is just some advice and tips to being a strong and respectable man. I've picked all of these up along the way and I have not always been like this. Some of them I still forget from time to time. The important thing is to respect others always and avoid disrespectful people. Realize you do not know everything (or much of anything), and stay humble. 

1. Communication: This is the way you present yourself out towards the world and the way you are perceived. Be confident in your actions (fake it if you must), be clear and concise with your words (spoken and written), try not to interrupt others and listen when others are speaking. This stuff becomes second nature over time. 

2. Be reliable and on time (or early): Arriving 15 minutes early for meetings or appointments is always wise. Allow and plan for unforeseen delays (traffic, accidents etc...)

3. Keep your appearance presentable: This doesn't always mean you have to be wearing dress shirts and a tie. The idea that you have to be buttoned up and clean shaven at all times is an antiquated one, but you should always be clean. If you have long hair, keep it tied back at work or in a place where you want to be respected, if you have a beard keep it trimmed and not wild looking. Dress for the occasion, if you have a big moment, dress nice. Wear a proper shirt, pants and belt to a job interview for instance. Get a nice watch (within your budget), wear proper footwear. If you don't know what is appropriate for a certain occasion, google it. 

4. Live within your means and invest in your future as soon as possible: This is probably the biggest one I wish somebody would've told me when I was younger. Investing in your future starts in a time-investment at school (junior high). You need to be in the higher level classes in order to get in to the better post-secondary options in university. This takes an incredible amount of hard work and dedication to succeed.

Investing also means literal financial investing. If you don't have extra income, further your position in life to get extra income. Once you have extra income, you need to start (wisely) investing. This does not mean gambling on meme stocks or start-up crypto currencies (these 2025 terminologies may be outdated by the time you read this), this means doing some basic research or talking to a financial advisor on how best to allocate investment money. Being financially literate is important no matter where you end up in life and will serve you forever. 

5. Surround yourself with good people, and put yourself in good situations. Use your head and common sense. I know teenage boys are somewhat retarded most of the time and you will make mistakes, but when you do, try to limit the severity of those mistakes and LEARN from them. Life is all about who can learn more and become better people. Be careful who you trust, there are a lot of bad people out there who lie and cheat their way through life, learn how to identify them and limit your interactions with them.

6. Don't drink too much. Drinking a few beers with buddies or a girlfriend is fun, until it's not. Don't get blasted and forget everything, nobody respects that. There will always be people in life that take things way too far with drinking and drugs, don't be that person. It might seem fun at the time, but it will screw up your whole life. Living with a drug or alcohol problem is life on hard mode, live life on easy mode. 

Don't start smoking weed until you are 25. You will want to try it, and it can be fun in moderation, but it is scientifically proven to majorly affect brain development. Once you are 25 and your brain is fully developed, go for it. If you don't like it, don't do it again. If you don't believe me about this stuff, google it. it's facts. 

7. Work hard, study hard. Work smart, study smart. Finish whatever you start, and if something is frustrating it just takes more practice. Learn new skills and join clubs and teams. Laugh, enjoy life, have fun and meet people. The world is cool. Take after your grandma and travel. 

8. Find joy, find happiness. If something or someone doesn't make you happy, leave it or them behind. 

I love you. 

Dad

 

4. To my son: You are a lifelong project

 

We all make mistakes in life, every single last damn one of us. I have made many mistakes in life. I have made many good moves and decisions as well, but a person tends to remember the mistakes more prominently, that's just a human thing. 

What separates the wheat from the chaff is this; we either learn from our mistakes and move forwards in self-correction, or fail to learn learn anything and move backwards. This is where the greatest humans are made, the ones that are able to recognize that what they are doing is wrong, and then figure out how to make it right. 

This is true of all aspects in life, we try to teach each other the proper way to go about life, but some don't understand or don't care. Those people are losers and will stay losers until a great moment of self discovery happens and they recognize the error of their ways (sometimes this never happens). So use social cues, use your brain, use common sense, logic and rationality. Too many of those walking around day-to-day don't have any common sense, so if you do you are miles ahead of those people in life.

And we are ALWAYS learning. From the moment you are born until the day you spring from this mortal coil, you are learning. When you stop learning, you stop existing as a human. There's this feedback loop of stupid going on and you have to tune into it, or stay stupid.

It goes like this: Do something stupid -> Think that was stupid and I didn't get a very good result from the stupid thing I did -> Stop doing stupid thing or change how it's done so it isn't stupid anymore -> get better result next time. 

It really is that simple. 

If you can master this and learn from mistakes (and hopefully keep those mistakes to a manageable level) you'll be laughing, and the world will be laughing with you. If you do something stupid, and then keep doing the same stupid thing, the world will start laughing at you and you'll be relegated to the stupid pile of humans, of which there are way too many already. 

 This goes for habits, actions, interactions, and situations. 

So learn for life. Stay out of the stupid pile.

3. To my Son: Practice is the key to life

 Practice is the key to life. 

Nobody is great at anything the very first time they try. Sometimes it might seem like that, because often people won't allow you to see a skill or talent until they have been at home practising that skill for many hours. 

Most professional athletes work for actual years, every day for multiple hours to get as good as they are at their profession. It all takes work and dedication to do something well. This is why school, and post secondary education, and grad school all exist. Because if you want a good life and to become skilled at something, it takes a long time to get there. 

So pick up hobbies, but follow through. This world is littered with people who try to do something and aren't good right away, and quit doing that thing. Then they move on to the next thing and repeat the process, never gaining any actual skills and floating through life as a person who isn't really good at anything and expecting the world to be good to them. The world is good to people with skills and those that can provide value to others with that skill. 

 So practice, don't give up and strive to be one of the best at whatever it is you like doing. All the hard work is worth it when you are. I promise. 

The saddest thing in the world is wasted talent. 

2. To my Son: Success is failure

Success and failure are not opposites. You will never achieve true success without failure so in this sense, failure is a part of success and the other way around. 

This may at times seem ironic coming from me (depending on when you read this) but this may be the most important piece of advice I have ever given you. I know you have probably heard me drone on about this in the past and hopefully you've given it a bit of thought, but you must fail in order to succeed, sometimes many times. 

And sometimes, these many failures will be discouraging. Enraging even. However just keep moving forward. If something is worth doing or is something you want to do, it is worth doing right. This takes practice and learning how to do it. 

So embrace the failures and just know, that the more you do something and learn from your mistakes as you go, you will get better and eventually you will succeed at it. 

So here comes all the old "Dad" stuff:

If you start something, finish it. 

Never give up on anything. 

Practice is truly the key to everything, reps and persistence will unlock the world. 

 

1. To: my Son

 Henry: 

I love you more than words can possibly describe. You are my reason for everything and your success is absolutely paramount in any list of priorities I'll ever have. 

I am doing everything I can to stay around and raise you the best I possibly can, as you are such an incredible person already and your whole family is excited for all the potential you have already displayed. 

This blog is going to be from here on dedicated to you and everything I've learned in my 40 years. I would like to pass on this knowledge to you. You may have heard me say some of this stuff already but we all need reminders. 

The first and most important information I could think of is this:

Never, ever, ever base your actions or internal mindset on what others think or say. 

Take pride in your own appearance, dress for success, practice good hygiene and use manners and respect towards others always, but do this for YOUR success and happiness not because of what others will think. 

Take stock of what you want out of life, whether that is a career, a family, a nice house or a nice life... and then figure out what you have to do to make that happen. Nobody will give these things to you, you have to work for every aspect of your life. When you do accomplish these things for yourself you will feel like a king I promise, there is no better feeling for a man than accomplishment and building his own life, and taking care of his family. 

WORK HARD! Right now (you are 9) that means school. Your priority has to be grades. It absolutely comes first over anything. Without doing well you at school, the rest of your life becomes so incredibly hard for no reason other than you decided it was more important to goof off with your friends for 6 hours a day then to get your work done. Trust me you will regret it. Nothing sadder in life than wasted potential.

I am speaking from experience there (as I will for most of these posts), and I took a very unconventional route. I did not do well in school in high school and although I knew how to do most of the work, I didn't. I went back to upgrade and complete my high school grades when I was about 22, I wandered around post secondary education for about 20 years after that, not knowing what would make me happy in life. I could have avoided all this pointless pain and wandering by just doing the work in school the first time.

What I want you to do, is decide in high school what you really like doing in life, and then figure out how to make money doing that. I'd advise you to look out for your own happiness in this sense as well. Do not get into social services or welfare services, although it may seem like a noble and giving profession you will burn out and start to change your philosophy on social welfare if you go into a career of this sort. If you end up making the wrong choice and want to try a different career out, that is totally fine. I'm just trying to avoid you waiting until you are 40 like me to finally get your life figured out. That is 20 years of my life wasted and I wouldn't wish that on anyone else.

Do some research, make some money... although money doesn't equal happiness, always hurting for money always equals unhappiness. Life is tough without money. 

 Remember as well, keep being you and the awesome kid that you are. Remember you don't have to goof off at school to get people to like you, the best people are drawn to successful people in life, not the idiot that started smoking weed in high school and flunked out because he'd rather sit in some kids basement playing video games than getting anywhere in life. 

This might seem like an old man trying to explain everything to you, but know that this comes from a place of complete love and support for you (my son, my everything). I only want you to have a happy life where you can have the things you want. 

One last thing: the moment someone shows you who they are with disrespect, believe them... run away from people willing to disrespect you in any way. Especially if its a cute girl, those people will never change and are trying to manipulate you. Real good relationships are ones of mutual respect. And love, love always.

We're mostly water

A man can either change with the times, or roll over and let the times change him. I'll take the former. 

Funny thing when you change your life (and your lifestyle) the things that you desire in almost every aspect of your life change as well. 

I no longer desire relationships that hurt me, no longer seek company just to hate myself for allowing disrespect to happen every time I see them. 

No longer am I alright with friends that despise me when they around each other, and then reciprocate love when they aren't around each other. 

I love my friends, and that is something that I believe deep in my soul. I am loyal even when I shouldn't be and before the changes in my life this loyalty was often misplaced for people that were palpable silent killers. People who were kind to my face and then murderous when they slunk into the shadows. 

Drinking buddies aren't real. That is all I had, was a series of old friends I made while drinking, drank with, and did stupid shit with because of drinking. 

This rings true (and probably 1000x more intense) in a romantic or sexual relationship. It's been said a million times, but you have to love yourself before anyone else can love you. I chased a bunch of drunk and disorderly women that were only interested in status, what others thought of them, and optics of a relationship. This is in stark contrast to what anyone should be looking for in a relationship: mutual respect, communication, seeking and supporting each-others goals and their own while being unhindered by a relationship. The relationship should make you feel successful before you actually are, during the process of becoming successful, and should make your entire definition of success change anyways. 

Until now only one relationship I've had has made me feel this way, and I was a young and stupid boy who fucked it all up with ego, hubris and self-hate. We were both young, it wasn't all my fault: I'd say it was about 75% my fault in that relationship. But I look back and wish I did things differently. I've learned from it and now hopefully, if I find someone who makes me as happy as she did, I will be able to show that love, reciprocate that love and be in love above all else. 

Finally: if you aren't feeling valued in life remember the parable of the value of a water bottle: 

A bottle of water in a supermarket is roughly .50 cents. 

A bottle of water in a convenience store is $2.50

A bottle of water in a movie theatre is $4.00

A bottle of water on a plane is $6.00 

If you don't think you are being valued correctly, change your f'n location.