What they practice in the trees

The kids were at day camp this week, the one in the middle of our big park here in Moncton. It's been there for decades. I know grown adults who went as kids and get a certain look on their face when they talk about it. The counsellors are these stellar young people, most of them home from university for the summer, and they make a point of being friendly and remembering my kids' names from previous years. I don't actually attend the camp, though some days I genuinely wish I could. But every morning, walking down the path to those cabins in the trees, I get excited. The energy is contagious in a way I can't fully explain.

And by the end of the day, the kids come home dirty, tanned, tired, and happy. Which, if you ask me, is the entire job description of a summer.

Every Friday, the camp hosts Camp Fire, where the parents come watch the kids perform the skits they've worked on all week. The director hosts, and he always lets us in on a bit of the camp's philosophy while he's at it. Last Friday did not disappoint. My son's cabin performed a hilarious skit about the stolen World Cup, which is timely, of course. My daughter's cabin did an adorable take on Toy Story's "You've Got a Friend in Me."

But it's what the director told us that I've been thinking about, and talking about, ever since.

He spoke about how that place, those cabins in the trees with that devoted staff, can be a sanctuary for these kids. They live in a world of screens and schoolwork and busy parents. At camp, for one week at a time, they get to really practice something most of us have quietly lost.

Presence.

Well. If I didn't love the place before, I sure did then.

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Here's why that word landed so hard, and I suspect it lands the same way for you.

Presence is something I work on. Actively, imperfectly, constantly. Because as an entrepreneur, it is a real struggle in a way I don't think people talk about honestly enough: there is literally always something you could be working on. Always. There is no bell at the end of the day. No shift that ends. The work doesn't finish; it just waits, patiently, in your pocket.

I'll tell you exactly what that looks like at my house. Any time I'm doing something with my kids, playing a game, even just watching a movie, I catch myself reaching for the phone. Check the email. Check the socials. Just a quick look. It isn't a decision. It's a reflex. And I would bet money you know it too.

And I'll tell you the only fix I've found, because it's almost embarrassingly low-tech: when I actually want to be sure I won't do it, I leave the phone somewhere else. On the charger, in another room. That's it. That's the whole move. And every single time, I'm glad I did. My whole body gets to be in the activity. And, this is the part that gets me every time, my kids know they have all of me.

Kids always know. They can feel the difference between a parent who is in the room and a parent who is actually there.

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Now I want to push one layer deeper, because there's a version of this conversation that stays cute and surface, and that's not the deal you and I have.

Colin has a phrase I've heard a hundred times, and I'd bet you've said your own version of it. "If I could just finish..." and then you fill in the blank. Tax season. The refinance. The acquisition. The turnover. If I could just get through this one thing, then I'll have room to slow down and be present.

And I always tell him the same thing: but there's always going to be something else.

There is no finish line where presence gets handed to you as the prize. I've stopped believing presence is a gift bestowed on us when the schedule magically clears, because the schedule never magically clears. Presence is something we have to choose. And choose. And keep choosing. No matter what. It's not always easy. The backslide is real, and I fail at it some percentage of every single week.

But I live my life on one basic understanding: we always get to choose again.

Not tomorrow. Not after tax season. Tonight, at the dinner table, we get to choose again.

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I can already hear the objection, because it's a fair one, and it's specific to people like us. Your phone isn't just an inbox. It's tenants. It's the furnace. It's the call you're afraid to miss. If I'm unreachable, the reasoning goes, and something breaks, that's on me.

So let's be completely honest about that, together. Yes, real emergencies exist, and when they happen, they trump sleep and family dinner. That's the job, and nobody's pretending otherwise. But truthfully? Those emergencies don't happen very often. What happens far more often is something that feels like an emergency because you've always treated it like one. Answering at 9pm doesn't make a thing urgent. It just trains everyone involved, including you, to expect that it will always be answered at 9pm.

So I ask Colin the question, and now I'm asking you: does this email actually have to go out tonight? Will something awful happen if it goes tomorrow morning instead? Or do you just like being quick, like getting it off your plate?

Sometimes presence costs you nothing but the small discomfort of letting something wait. Sometimes it means being okay with someone else making the call. Sometimes it's one simple boundary: no non-emergency messages after a certain hour.

That's the Install this week.

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The Install

One small thing you can put into your business this week.

The Overnight Test. It's not an app, not a tool, and there's nothing to set up. It's a framework with one question at the centre and two supports holding it up, and you can start using it tonight.

The question: "Will something awful happen if this waits until morning?" That's the whole test. Before you answer the text, send the email, or go handle the thing after hours, ask it, out loud if you have to. If the honest answer is yes, water where it shouldn't be, no heat in February, someone's safety, then go. That's the job, and you'll never regret going. But you already know how rarely the answer is yes. Everything else keeps until morning, and almost all of it is better in the morning, because morning-you writes a calmer email than 9pm-you ever has.

The distance. Don't rely on willpower, because willpower is the most overdrawn account you own. Rely on distance. When it's family time, the phone goes on the charger in another room. Not face-down on the table. Another room. The reflex can't fire if the phone isn't within reach, and the first evening you do it, you'll feel your shoulders come down an inch. The people at your table will feel it too.

The re-choice. You will backslide. This week, probably. You'll answer the 9pm text out of pure habit and catch yourself mid-reply. That's not failure, that's practice, the same way the kids at camp aren't perfect at it either. They practice. The rule isn't "never slip." The rule is the one I'd want you to remember if you remember nothing else from this issue: we always get to choose again.

I'll be straight with you about the harder truth underneath this one, because that's the deal I want with you. The Overnight Test is a real brick, use it this week and your evenings will feel different by Friday. But a boundary you hold with bare hands gets heavy, and the honest reason Colin and I can leave our phones in the other room isn't superhuman discipline. It's that, over years, we built a back office that doesn't need us every hour to stay standing. The message gets logged, the invoice gets filed, the non-emergency waits somewhere trustworthy until morning. When the business holds, the boundary stops costing willpower at all. That's not a brick you install from a newsletter. That's the house. And it's what we're building a place to share, with people exactly like you. More on that soon.

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So that's the story this week, and it started with a skit about a stolen World Cup.

The director was talking about the kids, but he was really talking to the parents, whether he meant to or not. Those cabins in the trees give my kids one protected week of being exactly where they are. Nobody's building us a camp. We have to build the sanctuary ourselves, one phone on one charger, one email that waits until morning, one choice at a time.

And with the way the world feels right now, I think we could all use the practice.

Next Sunday, I'll be back.

I'm glad you're here.

— Nicole