Today’s workshop was centered upon mental health and how it shows up in the workplace. It began with an officer sharing his life long journey with significant depression and his diagnosis of mania. Then the story of the family. It was very moving, very moving.
The stats, the resources, the profiles are unbelievable. Frightening to know how under resourced this illness is. Adjustment disorder, general anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder were in our discussion.
It is clear to me that we need to talk more about this. We need to understand more.
Leadership is a critical matter when it comes to the life of any organization and so investing in leadership means that you invest the people who are the leaders. That is what these days in Winnipeg are about. Today was spent with the divisional youth leaders and tonight was dinner with the new divisional leaders. Tomorrow I’m with the area commanders for the morning and back with the new divisional leaders for the afternoon.
Listening to those working in leadership reminds me of our days in the divisional work and I remember all too well the sense that the problem-solving is complex and often fraught with emotional baggage.
It is exciting as well to see how committed these leaders are to making a difference in the communities where they live. They understand that influence is in their hands and they have opportunity to impact people’s lives.
We are enjoying being in Winnipeg and being with friends too – that’s always a good part of these gatherings.
In 2005 I started a blog – Hybrid Thoughts – on Blogger. It’s been 11 years of posting thoughts, photos, videos, and links. At times I’ve been serious and reflective, other times I have been a bit goofy….yes I admit this part of my personality. Hybrid Thoughts began because we had moved to Calgary and I wanted my parents to be able to experience what our kids and we were in our new home. At first, I had been emailing photos but those were the days of dial up and lots of buzz, click, buzz…taking a long time to get one photo across the internet.
The idea of a blog came from Jason who suggested I could post photos and then all our family could see what we were doing. I experimented a bit with this and that until Hybrid Thoughts was born.
The new start is a switch from Blogger to WordPress – a change of platform. My thanks to Phil who worked to help me pull over the past 11 years of posts – unfortunately, they did not all come over. Yet, I will pick this up and move forward. You’ll see some changes – some differences for sure. I am working at understanding how this platform works so if you can be patient, it will get better over time.
It wasn’t a long visit but it was great to be able to spend some time with Leanne, Jacob and Hannah today. We chatted up quite a storm, turning back the clock a few times, reviewing the highlights of the past few years and bringing each other up to date. We looked at photos, a few videos and cheered for our kids. We even managed to talk some USA politics.
Lunch was delicious and I got to watch some of Hannah’s ballet lesson.
The weather is enjoyable….nice and hot, though Leanne feels it’s too hot.
Never.
Now on to a couple of days vacation.
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A few thoughts about us as a family and our interests.
