If I keep it all contained within this folder, then copy/paste it onto the site, I will have a backup of everything I need.

This is my typical thought process as I contemplate the nuances of keeping backups of all my work. Every story, and partial story, written, blog post, essay idea, whatever.

There’s also the culling of every single magic routine, gimmick and teaching device (DVDs, books, etc.) from my garage, while retaining those I think might be useful sometime down the road.

But then I think:

What if it all disappeared tomorrow?

What if all the backups malfunctioned, the posts on this site vanished, the stories were gone, the magic burned up, the podcast episodes disappeared and everything I built went away?

Simply put, I’d crack a beverage, sit down and get back to work.

And that’s when it became obvious I care little (if any) about the outcome and everything about the process.

I can only be broken if attached to things that do not last.

“Make sure to keep well.”

It’s a statement so overheard this year, the words have lost their meaning. Through the years, I’ve spent a lot of time building up my own support system to keep myself physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually healthy.

These are all works in progress and they have been nicely compounding for years (well… except the physical… that’s been a bit more recent).

However, with all of those in place, and committing to them, I still feel myself fall apart.

Sometimes, I just sit at my table and am unable to move.

I stare off into the abyss thinking about everything that is still on my plate, what can be accomplished, what actually matters… and I can’t move.

Meditation, exercise, eating healthy, loving family, friends, fresh air, appreciating the moment… all guards that have fallen. The cracks are forming and the shell is breaking.

Then there’s writing.

It’s the one solitary activity that still makes sense. The one place I can turn to when everything else is amok.

It’s all I got and it’s what I lean on.

Because sometimes, words aren’t enough, but they’re what we need.

“I’m sending you an anonymous survey to fill out to let me know how the course has been for you. What worked? What didn’t? I need to know.”

Those were the words accompanying my form I sent to students this year. If I were going to teach them in a new environment, with materials that were unfamiliar to us all, I needed to know how to make it better for them.

After all, students are the key stakeholders in education.

My teaching always seems to go smoother when I focus on them, ignore everyone else and pretend to tick off checkboxes that are “required.”

Sometimes, I wonder when new initiatives are pushed down through the system, who is really the stakeholder in mind? Education is ripe for political pandering, vulnerable to business ventures by for-profit companies (or people) disguising themselves as “educational” and targeted by everyone who feels entitled to elicit their uninformed opinions.

It’s also a frustrating breeding ground for stubborn egos.

As an educator, it’s necessary to take a step back and ask: who are we really trying to please?

The car was running while I waited on the yellow dot inside the reception area. Casually taking in the colours and decorations laid out for the Easter season, another parent stood to the dot beside me—both of us waiting for the staff of the daycare centre to bring us our kids for the evening.

“How’s it going?” I ask.

Without hesitation, she responds.

“You know, I’ve never had a bad day. I’ve had many tough ones, but in the grand scheme of things, I’ve never had a bad one.”

I replied with an affirmation for her outlook on life, which is not one held by many people.

“All things are a moment in time,” she said. “There were three days a few years ago where my mother died, my daughter was in the hospital and there was a health issue with me. It’s all done now and here I am picking up my granddaughter to take her shoe shopping.”

Serendipity chose that moment for the staff to bring her granddaughter out, who immediately ran into her arms. I wished her a good evening as they left, each thrilled to see each other.

Then the door opened and my own daughter, a smile beaming across her face at seeing me, ran into my arms.

Never a bad day, I thought to myself.

I can only hope that will be true for me… and even more, true for us all.

My childhood of learning new things from my dad involved holding a flash light and getting yelled at because it wasn’t pointed in the right direction. Lucky for me, this seems to have been a common occurrence among my friends.

However, watching him at work was witnessing a master of his craft.

His intuition for how to problem solve, work and get the job done was uncanny. What would take me hours to do was a drop in the hat for him.

Therefore, I fixated on getting things done faster.

Yet, had I slowed down and learned to do it right, an overly-exaggerated slow way, that would have been the catalyst to pick up speed later.

This was a lesson to be re-learned as a professional magician.

The slower you practice the techniques (or “moves”), the more ingrained it becomes in your mind. In due course, the technique is mastered and runs smoothly, unnoticed by the audience.

It was also a lesson to be re-learned as a writer.

The secret to picking up speed was not learning how to type faster, or training myself to dictate (although both are helpful endeavours for many other areas), it was to slow down and get it right the first time. Spend more, consistent time, actually practicing until you hit a level of mastery of being able to write a story in a bookstore window and win awards without a single round of editing (that’s not me, yet).

It appears the faster we want to learn things, the slower we need to go.

“I want to go on the swing.”

Helping her hop on, I slowly built the momentum for my daughter to climb higher. Her small legs kicked out with each push forward and swung back as she returned, laughing as the bottoms of her boots kicked me slightly.

“Higher!”

With each push, the laughter increased.

I’ve spent a lot of time chasing happiness. Many years in deep contemplative study, retreats, talks with trusted people, prayer, meditation, reading, pursuing my dreams, wealth, relationships and the long road to self-enlightenment.

And even if I spend the next thirty years still going down that road, stripping away all is unnecessary and pursuing only those things that will bring me the greatest joy…

it will still pale in comparison to my daughter on that swing.

I dare you to find a person who has more joy in their heart than a child with a house full of love.

The best lesson I learned from being a magician is the magic is for the audience. It’s about them and their experience.

They are not your props to satisfy your own ego.

In the classroom, the best lesson I learned is everything should be attuned so the class is about the students. Not what I want, but what they need.

The second you make anything about yourself, it’s only a matter of time before it all falls.

One wrong move, one bad decision or one mishap in your past and everything comes down with you. How often have we seen that happen in the last few years?

If, however, you make it about something beyond yourself…

beyond your own ego…

then you will have built something worth talking about.

A day may come when you will get everything you always wanted in life…

and you will not be able to get out of bed because of how miserable you are.

It’s funny how all the things you’ve wanted in life, or rather the things you need, are enough to satisfy, yet don’t. This is baffling to all of us considering that even someone in the ‘lower’ strata of a developed nation today has access to food, education and technology that is vastly superior to a monarch a hundred and fifty years ago.

Maybe the things we’re seeking aren’t the things we really wanted.

Sometimes life can feel like dancing in a minefield, waiting for the inevitable chaos to ensue all around you.

Other times, it’s the entrails of the past that won’t let go. They snag your mind and root itself into your daily outlook. It infiltrates every decision whether you desire it or not.

In a world where so much is out of our control, the one thing we can choose is joy.

It can be so difficult, especially with the mess that life can be—its randomness of events that seemingly come out of nowhere, forcing you to question whether the universe actually cares if we are here.

Choosing joy is our opportunity to look right back into it… and smile.

I have a very low, what Hemingway called, “bulls*** threshold.”

Harlan Ellison

Whatever our level is at right now, I think it’s about time we lower it further.

Talk less, listen more and be extremely wary of those who are trying to sell you something you “need.”