Hi! It’s been a minute. Or more specifically, if my math is correct, a bit over 4.1 million minutes. Yes, the last time I posted on this particular piece of digital real estate was July 3, 2018 – nearly eight years ago. I suppose we’re due for a catch-up!
Re-reading that 2018 post it’s funny how full circle this current moment feels. At that point I was just starting my post-public service career having left the Government of Canada a few months earlier and in the early days of a partnership with the Institute on Governance (IOG) to develop a new digital leadership program while also taking the first steps in my consulting practice. Fast forward to May 2026. I am still working with IOG and our Digital Executive Leadership Program continues to go strong with our 22nd cohort of the program (!) happening next month. In fact, these days I’m at IOG full time, having taken on the role of Vice President of Learning and Leadership early last year.
After a few years of what became an increasingly busy solo consulting practice, in 2021 I launched Think Digital, a digital government focused consulting firm that proved to be a fascinating learning experience in entrepreneurship (Coles Notes: it is a sometimes rewarding, sometimes lonely endeavor running your own business which can easily consume your every waking moment – and even some of the non-waking ones – if you let it!). I also dipped my toe into podcasting and for almost three years hosted the Let’s Think Digital podcast, which was both a lot of fun and led to many fascinating conversations with digital government experts and practitioners from around the world.
What else has happened since then? I’m still based in Ottawa, where we rode out the first waves of the pandemic in our downtown condo and then decided to put down deeper roots by venturing into the world of home ownership and moved to the south end of Ottawa just over five years ago now. Rita and I also decided to strengthen our own foundations by making the decision to get married in 2022 on the beaches of Maui. After knowing Rita since 1999 (we met in the first year of our undergraduate program at Carleton University, which feels like a few lifetimes ago) and having been a couple for over nine years now, I continue to feel grateful every day for her as my partner in life as we go through all the ups and downs together. And I would of course be remiss not to mention our two little furry companions who bring so much love and mischief into our household every day: Pumpkin and Pickles.
Speaking of roots, something else I mentioned in that 2018 blog post was the project I was working on to preserve the oral history and traditions of my Doukhobor ancestors. Well, I’m happy to report that it happened! In the summer of 2019 we launched both our museum exhibit and multimedia soundscape at the Western Development Museum in Saskatoon, as well as a documentary film that explores the evolution of the Doukhobor community in Saskatchewan since immigrating from Russia in 1899. This was a real labour of love on my part and I was thrilled that we were able to get it over the finish line after years of work. Over the past decade since I started that project we’ve lost so many of the people who were a part of it (including my grandmother Mabel Androsoff who was very influential in my life-long journey of exploring my historical and spiritual roots). I’m grateful that we were able to capture their voices when we did, before time – as it inevitably does – carried them beyond our reach. I would be remiss not to mention that I was incredibly humbled that for our work on this project, our team was awarded the 2020 Governor General’s History Award for Excellence in Museums.
What else? Well according to my Life Calendar that I referenced in that 2018 blog post, I am now solidly in middle age territory. While most days I still like to think I feel pretty young in mind and spirit, that is perhaps tempered with a little more perspective and hopefully a few dashes of wisdom too. The body of course has other things in mind and does not always cooperate as much as one would wish these past few years (Exhibit A: my lower back has never been the same since my herniated disk incident a decade ago), but that is the way of the world for most of us as we start getting a bit older. Indeed, at this age the generations above us start going through their own transitions in life. Increasingly it seems I’ve had to grapple with the sense of loss when those who may have played roles big and small in our lives since a young age are no longer with us. I mean this both in the very literal sense of those who pass away, but also those who come into and then exit our lives in various ways and for various reasons. It is of course the natural way of things, but it can also be disorienting to navigate nevertheless as these comings and goings in our lives stack up over time.
As of late I have found this leading to me thinking more consciously about what I’m choosing to build in my life, and perhaps just as importantly how I want to experience the building of it. A little bit of natural middle-aged malaise no doubt. Though hopefully tempered by that same perspective and wisdom that tells us that the very fact that our lives are temporary experiences within an infinite universe means that our choices matter, and those choices are what gives our lives meaning. There are years, and moments within those years, that in retrospect are where the die is cast and set us on trajectories that we may not even recognize until much, much later. For me when I look back, 1995, 1999, 2004, 2008, and 2016 would be at the top of my list.
So what has 2026 brought so far? It is of course too early to tell. I feel fortunate to have a platform through my work with the IOG to be able to in at least my small way support those working in the public sector to be better able to meet the moment. It can feel at times like the world is on fire, and it is perhaps too easy to simply feel overwhelmed by the scale of the challenges in front of us. When we launched the Canadian Digital Service back in 2017 I wrote about how working in public service feels like pushing on a mountain. You do it anyway because of the scale of impact you can have. You may only be able to move it an inch, but you’ve moved a mountain an inch. I hope that when I look back on these past few years I’ll see that I kept leaning in and pushing on that mountain – even when it was hard to tell whether it made a difference or not.
I won’t promise that I’m going to start blogging here again on a regular basis – truth be told I’ve never been good at keeping up a consistent pace on writing. I’ve been less active on social media in general these past few years. In part as a result of being busy in general, but also with the social media landscape feeling more and more like a digital dumpster fire, most days I’ve been less enthusiastic about engaging there. If you want to know what I’ve been thinking about when it comes to the issues I grapple with in my professional life, my podcast series has 33 episodes worth of what’s been on my mind for your viewing or listening enjoyment 🙂 You can of course still follow me on all the usual online spaces (I’m probably most active on LinkedIn as of late). As the kids say, my DMs are always open.
Onwards and upwards my friends!