2015 was a hell of a year for 42four – great clients, great projects and great promise for 2016. 

The best to all of you this Holiday season. Cheers. 

Just a few months ago I and my family walked many of the neighbourhoods that are now scarred with the events of yesterday. We know what theses places sound like in the afternoon as restaurants prepare for the lunch rush. We know the smells of cooking and exhaust from scooters. We met some of the people who live in these places and they were kind and gracious to the last one.

Our hearts are broken for you, Paris. 

I'm not normally one to use this space for personal updates, but the net these days is full with negativity so I thought I’d tip the scales a little.

It is six years, almost to the day, that I was cured of cancer. The cure involved a gruelling 9 hr surgery that replaced a good amount of the bones in my right leg with a science fiction's worth of chromium and titanium and in the process removed a sizeable chunk of my quadricep – nasty to be sure, but I can walk, I am healthy and, more importantly, I am alive.

Originally the technology gave me about 25 years of use and then I would lose my leg. A shitty prospect for what would be a 63 year old me. Last year however, while getting my 5 year all-clear, I received news that the tech had progressed and, barring an accident, I would never lose my leg. 5 years clear of cancer was good enough news, but no amputation? That was just fantastic.

So, I won’t lose my leg. This changes things. Looking back now I realize how much I was limiting myself and, in many ways, how much smaller my world had become - not without justification to be sure, but the technology’s limitations were only part of the story – the rest was on me. And Even months after this great news I was still holding back. Until, that is, I was given inspiration (a small spark) to think bigger, to allow myself to think bigger. 

So I decided I would do something I have only dreamt of doing for over six years. I would run.

I gave myself 4 or 5 months.

Turns out that prosthetic bone technology isn’t the only thing to progress massively over the last half a decade – physiotherapy has moved right along with it. And now, thanks to that beautiful spark, the support of my family and friends, Kate (my amazing physiotherapist) and a lot of very hard (and very painful) work I am almost half way there. Meaning, what I thought would take another three months will be done in less than three weeks.

I thought I had more time for running shoe shopping…

Recently a client of mine posted a photo of her new kitchen to a social media site (I won't repost it here as it's not mine to do). We had worked together pretty hard to get to the finish line on this one. There was a lot of back and forth with the city, a lot of drawing, many phone calls, many revisions and a tonne of shopping. It was a good project with a great client.

The photo shows baking supplies on an island we designed together. In the background, appliances arrayed on a counter (maybe not quite where they'll live permanently yet), beautiful aqua blue tiles behind them, something already affixed to the fridge with a magnet, and, barely visible in the background is a laundry basket, – evidence of a happy family at home in their newly renovated house. Hardly the kind of photo typically used in a portfolio, which is sad because no other project photo could make me happier. This is what we were shooting for after all of those (sometimes crazy) months of working together. This is exactly what I wanted to see.

This is as it should be.

Never fall in love with your design, or so goes the maxim anyway.

The reasons seem clear, obvious even. In those initial moments you can get carried away with the poetry of creation, you can become trapped in the glamour of a beautiful lie, swept along in a current of fantasy and there's potential for heartbreak.

These are all good reasons and true. And not. These initial sparks, this falling in love, isn't a fiction, it is merely an incomplete truth and only dangerous and unsustainable when it is ungoverned and withheld from the world. To be complete, this spark needs to be brought out into the light and shadows of you peers, your partners and the desire and needs of your client. This completion will make it something different, maybe radically so, but without that first spark it could never be strong enough to thrive. It could never be what it's meant to be.

Embrace those flashes of insight from a rooftop garden conversation or those long and quiet realizations from watching the tide from the beach. Without these, without that initial madness, without that passion and without that risk, what is the point of this thing of ours? Without these, what are we left with?

What else is there?

Fall in love, make sparks, but respect what you're making and those you're making it with, offer both your full attention, but allow it into the light and shadows, listen and trust that it will endure and be right.

Sparks are worth fighting for and waiting for what they can become is time well spent.