For any of you that have never listened to Sam Harris, his thoughts/ theories surrounding our free will have been a game changer for me on my learning to really just ride the waves of life. We have no real control period and I challenge you to listen to him and make a solid argument against his theories. Today, was one of those days that reminded me I’m not in charge. My guys on day one of opening up this large landscape project (it’s a $200k project and growing daily) hit their cable line and obviously killed their internet, tv and such. I found this out from the client as I was waiting to go into one of the medical tests this week when my client told me through email that this occurred and that Comcast said they could be there Tuesday. I was obviously pissed. However, after working through and expressing my frustrations to my team (and Diana), I called my electrician and he’ll be there in the am to patch it all back together and the clients super appreciated both my timely response and my solution. This is something I’m not sure I had the emotional awareness, nor skills, to navigate in before I put in the work years ago, and learned to really let go of much of this notion of control. Now, how does this really relate to Sam Harris? Well, while I’m on the phone with my electrician trying to sort this all out, my site guy at the greenhouse project calls me to inform me that one of his guys just backed into my clients mailboxes destroying them. I received texts with pictures at exactly the same time. I then jumped into navigating this. So, there clearly are forces around us affecting us we don’t recognize. I mean on both huge projects at nearly the exact time??? Moments like these I tend to say “Damn you Sam Harris” while shaking a fist. But knowing these forces are at play around me, it does free me up to find solutions instead of being guided by reactive emotions or letting some old thought pattern take control. Still frustrating though 😉

I'm conscious of being a bit stop-start in participation here. I will work on that. Strategy work is still flat but seems to be very widespread. Conversely some refreshing interest in Culturate and I need to get onto planning how I will deliver our version of the Team to Tribe journey (with credit to Philip and MyWolfTribe) over a range of contexts from professional services (law) and industrial. Weather is very dark and gloomy here now which is getting to me a bit. Interestingly I've been asked to appear on a couple of podcasts to present Culturate. I also got invited to be part of the leadership team at a men's event in the South island. But I think both the state of my knee and general state of work makes this impractical. But hugely flattered to be asked!

Beauty speaks for itself. I want to bring this kind of radiant light to the world but let too much get in the way.

Virtually no browsing - with @Philip Folsom Ticking off admin tasks and 6+hrs on calls today left very little time to be wasted. Created a Youtube channel - thanks for the prod @Oxana K !! Thought I'd run out to the gym this afternoon, but that was not to be - work stuff came up and that's the priority at the moment. Edit: No alcohol, no temptation. The streak continues!

Structural steel went in today for the gable end entryway. Im there tomorrow starting to help set the runs of pipe, main channel drain and conduits with my electrician and plumber in preparation for the floor being poured next week. Sewer, water, gas and electric pipes going into the house are all inspected and backfilled. Next up are the structural masons that will build out the two gables. I’m going to start posting again on socials regularly, as honestly I’ve got a lot of cool shit going on and I do need to share it with the world. For any of you interested: Instagram: @TheLotusGardener @artfully_stoned Facebook: @TheLotusGardener @RockArtStudios