Living life away from home

\

Victoria, BC
Sitting at a window seat at Moka House in the funkyhip Cook Street village district of Victoria.   In a tourist town, little neighbourhoods like this are the ones that keep locals sane.   I’m here partly because it appears that I am turning into more and more of a local around here.
We did a good day of work today with the VIATT crew, cracking some solid communications questions and planning our Art of Hosting training for later next month.   We are getting deep into a process of community linkage that will expand and solidify the capacity of the indigenous communities of Vancouver Island to participate and run the set of child and family services that are provided in their communities.   There is some solid vision at play here and a very good team of curious, spirited and innovative people who bring a variety of perspectives to every question.   The conversations we have are amazing, and there is deep a solid commitment to the core purpose of the initiative: to keep children at the centre of our deliberations.   We have even taken to the practice of placing pictures of our kids on the table in the centre of our workspace, as you can see from the photo above.

One result of the good quality of the work here and the desire to go very deep into the fundamental work is the fact that it seems like I’ll be spending a lot more time in Victoria over the next year.   And so, I’m looking for ways to bring some normalcy to my life here.   Last night I trained with a local Taekwondo school and tonight I stopped by the house of a friend and colleague tonight to cook supper.   He has been on long term disability for more than a year battling the extreme pain of chronic arthritis and suffering the attendant demons, slings and arrows that come with it.   It was good to see him, good to stand in a kitchen and cook some curry and have a bit of a semblance of a real life, even if the family are back home on the Island that I rarely see these days.