David Demers’ Gratitude Journal

Saturday 15 May 2014

I am grateful for my family.  My wife is “a rock”, the one that everything revolves around.  She is able to juggle work and family life and is also able to progress toward her “other” goals in her religious life (likely to become a priest after retirement).  My son Lucas is a great kid.  He decided to go to French private secondary school after doing his primary schooling in English.  He is smart and articulate – if you can get him talking.  He is doing well at his new school.  He is enjoying being in the junior band (he plays the French Horn) and is looking forward to learning Spanish.  My daughter Sophie is a bundle of energy.  She likes swimming, dancing, singing, and she also had a lot of fun at her cheerleading day camp during her week off of school.  She is smart but not the same kind of “school smarts” that Lucas has.  To keep her interested in school when she gets to secondary school, we are going to have to find some sort of performing arts – study combination school to keep her motivated and enthused about school.  As my wife said, if Sophie could be at the “Glee” school on television, she would fit right in.  The big question will be what kind of school that she can get into when the time comes (she is only in Grade One).

Sunday 16 May 2014

Even though there are not a lot of us that go to church, the people that are there are very nice.  My wife is one of the Wardens at the church – she has been one for several years, and will be stepping down next year.  My daughter is very much a “free spirit”, during the hymns she goes to the back of the church and dances.  Both Lucas and Sophie especially love the “coffee time” at the end of the service, they get to drink juice and especially eat some cookies.  Sophie seems to be taking an interest in playing keyboards, she often asks the organist if she can play the organ a little bit at the end of the service during coffee time.  Both Lucas and Sophie are totally at home at Church on Sundays - they should be, they have been there (almost) since birth.

I am very lucky that I have found an activity that I very much like doing (my “flow” I guess), playing bridge.  I get to play once a week on Saturday afternoons.  When I am concentrating on a bridge hand then “everything else goes away” as it requires my total concentration.  It is a challenging game that never wears out as every deal is different.  I will never be a World Champion, but I do fairly well.  The aspect that I like is that it is a social game, not a solitary game like Chess.  I consider myself lucky to have found a game that can sometimes get me into “flow” concentration, and it allows me to “escape” any “downers” that might occur in my life.

Monday 17 May 2014

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!  Not very many ULaval students get into the St. Patrick’s Day spirit, I have yet to see anyone wearing green today, yet alone a St. Patrick’s Day T-Shirt.  I am a poor example as I did not wear anything green today.  I consider myself lucky that returning to University is working out fairly well for me.  When I found out that my position was cut at work it seemed pretty grim, but it has given me the opportunity to go back to get an MBA, something that was in the back of my mind for the last few years.  The fact that I have been coping fairly well with the course load and my results have been fairly good is promising.  You never know until you start whether things will work out alright, and so far I have been doing better than “just keeping my head above water”.  The fact that my “pension stuff” from my previous employment is working out well was also a very pleasant surprise.  Things could have been so much worse than they are.  I have a job interview coming up for full time summer employment (potentially continuing part-time in the fall), so with that and the “Journée Carrière FSA Laval” coming up I am optimistic that I will find gainful employment this summer.  I have reason to be cautiously optimistic regarding my short to medium term career prospects, which is a lot better than being pessimistic – University life is going pretty well so far.