Dispatches From The Quiet Side Of The Lake* Part One

Question de Jour

A few people who know me have remarked that my writing has started to morph into a kinder, gentler narrative. To a one, they all believe that my change of scenery is the largest contributing factor to this.
Since I don’t think about these things very much, it sort of became a question in my head…are we really products of our environment to that extent?
So that’s what I thought about this morning.
I spent more than four decades in the city of Toronto. I had my ups and I had my downs. I had a great career in advertising which was a hell of a lot of fun and had even more fun as a creative entrepreneur or mini agency.
I went to college, dropped out, got married, had kids and raised them there. I had a few good friends and a lot of good acquaintances, associates, and clients.
But then one day, about two years ago now, I started to get this feeling that I could not put my finger on. I talked about this with my wife and she just chuckled and told me that because the furniture arranging possibilities in my home office were limited, I have started to want a new office.
This was her satirical way of pointing out that I had become restless (again) and needed a change of scenery.

The Commitment To Change

After that, our lives began to change. On the weekends, we would get in the car and head off to explore possible new destinations. The only constant was that they were not Toronto.
We checked out Guelph, Coburg. Kitchener, Barrie, Ancaster, and Fergus where my pal Bill Tibbles lives. We finally, and quite logically, settled on St Catharines.
There were a couple of key reasons for that choice. Number one was to be closer to my immediate family, a brother and two sisters and their spouses because we were all pretty close.
The second reason was that, once I started to think about it, I realized that Toronto was becoming a different kind of city. More murders. More crazies out on the street. Insane traffic problems. And all the other accompanying flotsam and jetsam that most big cities go through as they grow.

The Fluiditiy Of Change

The effects of moving from the downtown area of a very large city to the lakeside area of a much smaller one are still manifesting themselves in my head.
But the main thing I have noticed is this, and it comes right back to the ‘product of your environment’ thesis.
My anger and cynicism, which were useful tools for a long time, are morphing into something much more beneficial to my mental state.
Perhaps it’s because this environment gives me more time to reflect.
Perhaps it’s just because there so so much less noise in my head. Or perhaps it’s the combination of a lot of things. But I feel that I have finally moved on from my ‘angry young man’ phase into something much more in tune with where I am and why I’m here now.
I have been very lucky to have been in control of my life for pretty much for as long as I can remember, mainly because I was a complete control freak, and didn’t trust too many people.
But in this iteration, a lot of that has fallen away. I’m not exactly sure what is replacing it. I guess that remains to be seen. But I do feel it changing. And I do like the feeling.
And in these days of utter turmoil and bullshit being heaped on us by the metric tonne, it’s about as good a feeling as it’s possible to achieve.
* Thanks to fellow Beezer Kevin Pashuk for coining The Quiet Side Of The Lake. It’s a perfect descriptor.

Jim Murray is a marketer, communication strategist, writer, art director and blogger. His partner, Charlene Norman is a business systems and operational analyst. Their collaboration is called Bullet Proof Consulting, headquartered in St Catharines, Ontario. Bullet Proof is designed to help companies change their thinking for the better, to become more productive, efficient better branded and successful in today’s highly competitive business world. You can get a very clear impression of how we think by reading our blogs at www.bulletproofconsulting.ca/blog