I’m back on-line! It’s been over a decade since I published my last book, wrote my last column for Alberta Venture Magazine and posted my last post in my own ezine (what a blog used to be called before someone thought of the web log.) It’s also been my crankiest decade.

My coach Phil (www.extraordinaryleadership.com) has a concept called FU (“fuckedupedness”) that explains much of any dour mood.

The idea is really simple. “Nature abhors a vacuum” as Aristotle famously said. In the gaps between what I’m obliged to do and sleep, I have numerous gaps in my year. I have a choice to fill this space with something creative or something less constructive. The less constructive is “FU”.

I filled a bunch of my last decade with golf FU and sugar FU instead of keeping on with my writing. As soon as I started taking my writing more seriously, I had much less space for FU. I’ve filled a lot of it with joy.

There are as many kinds of FU as there are people out there: drama-at-work FU, economic downturn FU, extramarital affair FU, conflict-with-teenaged-children FU, gambling FU, heart attack and cancer FU, car accident FU, start-a-venture-and-reduce-my-life-savings-to-zero FU, employee FU, investor and client FU. I also tried epic-mountain-bike-crash-week-in-the-hospital FU.

During that week in the hospital recovering from a perforated bowel (not recommended), I had a lot of time to think and I decided it was high time I got off my ass and start writing again. This blog post is my first one out of the can. I’ve sent it to you as someone who I have met and like. I already feel better.

The solution to FU is to do something constructive either to improve the quality of my life or the quality of others. Writing is my contribution and a way to have more fun than a loop of golf mired in suicidal depression. I’ve experienced more joy in the past 6 months post-crash than I did in the previous 6 years. FU cannot enter where something creative already exists.

When you find your FU you have also found the space to create something new and more valuable.

I am launching the first in a series of twelve books I am publishing over the next three years at the ATB Entrepreneur Centre on 17th Ave in Calgary on Thursday, October 26th at 6pm. I hope to see you there!