In town a month already.  Getting acclimated.  Driving faster, getting impatient.  Needing car repairs.  Using enough fuel to warrant a protest group of my own.  But….it’s good.  It’s all good.

You know…feeling and being alive….doin’ stuff….writin’ about it…?

Car repairs?  Well, that’s a weird one – a mouse, rat or squirrel made a nest on my engine at some point (URBAN RODENT!) and chewed on the distributor cap and wires to ‘settle in’ and, because of that, caused the car to miss and flash warnings.  $500 later and a stray cat strapped to the air cleaner and we are good to go.  Cat’s a bit noisy but so is the whole of the city – you just have to learn to tune it out…ya know?

I am ‘doing business’ and it feels a bit like old times.  I even bought a couple of dress shirts.  But there is no going back.  I don’t fit.  Not really.  Still, I am accepted as an older experienced guy in the role I have now and people sometimes say ‘sir’ and that sort of thing.  It’s weird but it is also illuminating to learn that so much that one has learned over the years is actually NEWS to young people!  Simple, basic lessons on life, business, whatever, still has to be passed on to the next generation and, for the last forty years, I WAS that next generation.  Now I am the GRAND or ‘last’ generation.  Now I get to pass stuff on.

‘Course none of it is necessarily correct, true or even relevant to what they are asking about but I pass it on anyway.  One of the nice things about getting old is you don’t really care all that much about what you say.  I can tell the younger ones anything!

No sexual advice, tho.  That topic has gone way beyond me.  I don’t get it.  50 shades of grey?  I am still trying to be a good missionary.  I am way out of it!

Some of my advice will work, tho.  I am pretty sure.  Maybe half.  About the same as a coin toss, actually.

One odd feeling: I may have done my last mediation……it was good.  I liked them.  They got sorted.  It was a good experience all around.  Friends were made.  All good.  But…well, hard to say, really…..I charge $300 an hour and it just wasn’t worth it…NOT for me, anyway.  It wouldn’t have been worth it at twice that.  TIME is what I value now.

I dunno….I never really became a mediator for the money and I only raised the rates to ‘cut back’ on the work but no one is worth $300 an hour in a world like ours (especially me) and that includes the Sedins (both of them!).  There are people who don’t make that in a year!

And Harper should be paying us!

I usually do about five hours of work to bill one hour but, even at that, I am NOT working for the money.  I work from interest.  Always have.  Most people do when they think about it.  And I am no longer that interested in the ordinary disputes in life and small business and that was my area of expertise as a mediator.

And if you are not interested, you are NOT good.

It is time to quit unless something BIG comes along.  I’d go to Syria.  I’d go to Ukraine.  I’d even go to Hong Kong or Ferguson, MIssouri but nano-disputes no longer turn me on.  I need a war or something.  And, to be frank, I’d be too scared to be much good mediating ISIL maniacs or Boko Haram, so my curiosity is way, way larger than my courage.

Time to retire again, I guess.  I’ll be checkin’ out again as soon as these current young people I have bamboozled catch on……