Celebrate Success

It has been a crazy busy few weeks at work for me. We were organizing this little thing - you might have heard of it, this little CFL game to be played here in 2015, an exhibition game that will bring the Edmonton Eskimos to town to meet their rivals the Saskatchewan Roughriders - and yesterday seat reservations for the game went on sale. It has been, as I often say, a helluva ride - and there was a lot of hard work along the way (most of it admittedly done by other people as I watched in awe). I was honoured to be even a small cog in the wheel of all this, and last night while my team talked about the day we were reminded about something we often forget to do, both personally, professionally, and, I think, as a community - celebrate success.

You can get so very wrapped up in the work of making something happen that you forget to savour the end result. You forget to celebrate what you have accomplished. You become so enmeshed in the details, the "getting it done", and you invest your efforts so heavily that by the time you have reached the goal you are too exhausted to celebrate. But celebration is important. Celebration matters.

We have so much to celebrate in Fort McMurray. I think we become so bogged down in getting it done - and in all the challenges we meet, like traffic - that we forget to celebrate all the great things. This is a list of things I want to celebrate. Your list is very likely different than mine. I think, though, this Canada Day long weekend is a perfect time to celebrate all the things that make our community great. What do you celebrate this weekend? Leave a reply and tell me, because I would genuinely love to know what others think is worthy of celebration and gratitude.

Someone I know and admire has told me that every morning when she makes her bed she has a "gratitude minute". It is one minute when she does a menial task that requires little thought and she can instead devote her thoughts to whatever she is grateful for that day. This is my gratitude minute. And this is my encouragement - in fact my request - that you take one minute to celebrate success in this community, and be grateful for what we have. We are so very lucky here, so far north where the sun shines forever in the summer and the northern lights dance and the boreal forest surrounds us. Take a moment this weekend to celebrate us, okay? Because we deserve it!

Today I Celebrate...

- the SPCA and RMWB for reaching

a landmark animal control agreement

that will benefit our community

- a giving community that came

 together at a time of crisis

and showed our strength

and our big spirit

to the watching world

- my coworkers, who are an amazing team, 

and who I am honoured to work with every day

- all those small locally owned businesses

who struggle with high costs to 

bring us goods and services

but who keep their doors open every day

despite the challenges

-all our social profit organizations

for what they do every single day

just because they know it needs to be done

and smile while doing it

-our leadership, municipal and provincial,

for being strong and capable

when this province and community

needed them most

- organizations like Events Wood Buffalo,

TEDx Fort McMurray,

Social Prosperity Wood Buffalo,

and all the others

who bring events, conferences, and summits

of every kind to this region

simply for our education, entertainment, 

and enlightenment

- all those who volunteer their time 

and/or money to help others

and who do it because

they simply love to give

Finally I celebrate everyone who reads this blog,

retweets me on Twitter,

likes my Facebook page,

or reads the things I write for 

local magazines and newspapers.

If I am a "success" by any measure

it is solely because of you.

Am I grateful? 

Damn straight I am.

Thank you. 

Today I celebrate you.