Dr. Feelgood

I'm now deeply into my 50th year and still feeling optimistic (sorry Richard). It might be that I'm reading too much Christopher Alexander. Such a frank, workmanlike but so profound understanding of how the configuration of built space can make everything better. If only he were right....

Global warming has been postponed for a few days so the temperatures can plunge to interesting levels and my kids will be assured of at least a few days of skating in the neighbourhood rink. I'm sure the pundits will be out in full force about it all tomorrow.

For the second day in a row, I walked past a man at our local park who was sleeping in an idling car, seat fully restrained, slack-jawed, possibly snoring. He looked poor, unkempt, a bit beaten by life. I imagined that he must have nowhere to go between jobs. Is it possible his car was his home? I wondered whether to check on him, but didn't. Last week, I passed three people in almost the same spot -- two men and a woman. They looked as though they might be from the Middle East, but I couldn't tell what language they were yelling. The woman was the most incensed of the three, occasionally raising her fists to beat lightly on the men. At one point, one of the men began to grab at her and she yelled louder and pulled away. This was when I became confused and worried. When does a stranger intercede? When should I have worried about her safety? Not understanding what they were saying was not helpful. In the end, I decided to stop, a couple of hundred feet away, turn around and watch for a while. I hoped that their realizing they were being witnessed, turning from being a trio of very hot "I's" to a she and a pair of he's would bring the fire down a notch or two. I don't know if it worked, but the yelling stopped. Who knows what I will see there tomorrow?

I'm once again up far too late for my own good, sending off encouraging emails to colleagues that I think are really meant to bolster my own confidence on the eve of the day that I sign off on the biggest order of my career, knowing full well that I don't really know what I'm doing, but I'm getting better by the day at faking it. What if that was all there were to getting things done? Getting other people to believe you know the way? How sad that would be. Sometimes leadership seems so simple, as if most people just stand motionless waiting for the smallest provocation to impel them to action. They know what to do, they may even know what they want to do, but just need a little push. It's as if we're all standing on little peaks, filled with potential, just not being quite sure which way we want to roll. If someone comes along with a little helping hand, we're only too willing to be guided. At other times, it just seems incredibly complex and confusing and I feel like a little boy with great big flabby fingers trying to put an intricate Swiss watch together without bending or breaking anything. One wrong word, one forgotten issue, one false step, can suddenly explode into a huge problem, in seconds it seems, ruining days and days of careful planning. It's hard not to believe I won't soon make some huge gaffe, some nasty public fart which will cause all the fun I'm having to vanish overnight. Ah, ego.