I make a penny, the boss makes a dime. That’s why I shit on company time. - etched in a bathroom stall.

It’s more profitable for the business owner… or is it? Let’s take a look, shall we?

As an example, let’s look at a what a pizza delivery guy profits in a night, and what the pizza owner makes.

Profit is the financial gain a business makes when its total revenue exceeds its expenses.

The pizza owner charges $5.00 per delivery. The arrangement is simple. The driver pays for all the pizzas he delivers, and $2.50 per delivery (half the delivery fee charged to the customer) and pockets the rest as his earnings. The car, gas and hourly labour are at the cost of the delivery driver.

You might think, that’s bullshit. The owner doesn’t pay any expenses and collects all the money for the pizzas and half the delivery fees.

The owner on the other hand has overhead expenses to pay for;

• Rent & utilities

• Phone & internet

• Insurance

• Equipment rental or financing fees

• Advertising

• Franchise fees

• Food, supplies and freight costs

• Dishwasher, cook, cashier, waitress

The owner pays these costs no matter if pizzas are sold or not. The owner must recoup the costs with the profits from each pizza and providing delivery service allows for more pizzas to be sold.

Who has the larger risk? Should the reward be greater if the risk is higher? Would you like the responsibility of managing all the tasks of being an owner?

You spend years learning the trade.

Then one day you realize you also need to learn:

• business

• communication

• leadership

• money

• stress

• responsibility

• people

• and yourself.

A lot of tradesmen aren’t just building projects.

They’re trying to build a life while carrying more pressure than most people realize.

That’s part of what The Journeyman is about

The news was playing in the background from an app on our TV. There was talk of Trump and his visit to China, along with commentary about Alberta applying for a referendum to separate from Canada.

For a moment, I caught myself.

I quickly locked my phone and tossed it face down onto the table beside me.

“What’s wrong?” my wife asked.

Have you ever noticed yourself while consuming modern media?

Not just watching it — but watching yourself watching it?

I ask because lately I’ve begun catching something in myself. A tension. A quiet agitation.

What frustrates me isn’t necessarily whether the stories are true or false. It’s the realization that my attention has been captured by them at all.

Modern media is designed to hold attention. Every headline, every dramatic pause, every perfectly timed reaction is engineered to keep us emotionally engaged. Once you begin noticing it, it becomes difficult not to see the staging behind it all.

You start asking strange questions:

Why was someone filming this exact moment?

Why does every clip feel edited for maximum emotional effect?

Why do these stories arrive in endless succession, each one demanding outrage, fear, or allegiance?

And then comes the uncomfortable realization:

I allowed myself to be pulled into it.

Click-baited.

Propagandized.

Emotionally hooked.

That realization is what triggers me most.

But lately I’ve been trying to look at being “triggered” differently.

A trigger can act like a mirror.

When something provokes a strong emotional reaction, it may be pointing toward something unresolved within ourselves — some belief, fear, insecurity, or contradiction we haven’t fully examined.

So when deception triggers me, I have to ask:

Where am I being deceptive in my own life?

Where am I performing instead of being honest?

Where am I editing myself for approval?

Where have I traded authenticity for attention, comfort, or belonging?

Maybe that’s the deeper lesson hidden beneath all the noise.

Sometimes the things that disturb us most in the world are reflections of the things we still need to confront within ourselves.

Being triggered may simply be life’s way of handing us a mirror.

You see, this blog is about learning and rediscovering creativity. I used to paint and draw a lot as a kid and somewhere along the lines, I stopped. Nowadays, I feel like I can better paint pictures with words.

There is something inside me that wants a voice. Either it is my inner child that has gone unheard and feeling unloved for many years, or this inner voice is not mine at all.

For several years now, I have thought of myself as an imposter. As if I am just making these things up in my head. It feels that way. It comes on as a sort of knowing.

It starts out with my guess at the first letter of a name, just as I guessed out loud with my wife this morning. “Lauren. Lawrence. Did you know a Lawrence?”

My wife is going fasting this coming weekend.

As a practice, the Ojibwe will go out into the woods for four days in the spring. No food and no water. They set up a tent with blankets, sleeping bags, and they surround it with tobacco ties of a specific number.

Each tie is made by hand and smudged with a prayer - I make sure I tie one and include it as a prayer from me to protect her while she’s out there.

This can be very spiritually meaningful as she witnessed from her fast last year.

“Yes, one of my clients was a Lawrence.” He passed away some time ago.

“He’ll see you there”, I said.

Once I confirm the spirit by name, they give me goosebumps to confirm I’m correct.

The next steps feel like I’m guessing some more in my head, but I’ve come to know them as suggestions from spirit. Typically it’s the one I’ve identified, but once I open that doorway it seems like other spirits start pushing to the front of the line.

Some stronger or louder spirits in life keep their personalities on the other side and will start speaking to me. Sometimes they are spirits connected to me, other times they are connected to the person I’m physically with.

Every time, they confirm I have this gift no matter how many times I downplay or deny I do.

I recently registered thejourneyman.ca, a personal blog and resource hub I’ll be developing around life, money, work, travel, hobbies, personal growth, and the lessons we gather along the road.

The site is still under construction, but the idea is simple:

Still learning. Still building. Still becoming.

The Journeyman is for people who are trying to build a more capable and meaningful life, one lesson at a time.

More to come.