My first phone

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It’s hard to believe that I’ve never owned my own phone. I’ve been an administrator since the mid 2000’s, and the job came with a phone. Before that my wife and I shared a phone… Why would we have needed our own phones?

With the end of the month retirement deadline looming, and a holiday to the interior on our agenda, it was time for me to head to the store and buy a phone in my own name. It’s seems rather odd to be saying that for the first time in 2026. Just think of all the changes that have occurred since I shared a flip phone with my wife.

How different are our lives? How much more focused on our phones are we? How much more do we rely on them for information, banking, entertainment, direction, and of course, communication?

I couldn’t imagine sharing a phone today… I’m having a hard time remembering how I did it 20 years ago!?!

Teamwork exemplified

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I’m not a huge soccer fan, but I have to say that it was a pleasure to watch Spain’s offence in the final today. It was one of the beast examples of teamwork I’ve seen on any sports field. The team moved together, the players understood their roles, and yet they were fluid, not robotic.

They played an elite team game. They demonstrated their skills, and their ability to work together. They understood the assignment and everyone played their part.

That game wasn’t won just today. It was won through the building of a team culture, countless hours of skills training, and a strategy that relied on everyone being part of what they built. The level of domination they demonstrated on the pitch, when it comes to control of the play, probably sits so far above the statistical norm that I’d question if a final will ever be so one-sided again.

It truly was a pleasure to watch them.

_____

Update: Check out these stats!

Ultimate game

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My youngest daughter is dating an Ultimate (frisbee) athlete who plays for the Seattle Cascades Ultimate team. He’s a defensive specialist currently leading the league in blocks, heading into his final game of the year… which is fantastic for his rookie year as a professional.

Today we drove down to Seattle to see the game. Ultimate is a great game to watch, it’s high scoring and fast paced. The athleticism shown by these top players really makes the game a joy to watch. 

((Video: Great defence!))

If they can

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I think the first time I heard this term was from Ross Greene,

“Kids do well if they can.”

It stuck with me. Kids want to behave well, but they don’t always have the skill, resources, or know-how to do so. Give them the skills, rather than punishing or trying to reward the good behaviour they don’t have the skills to achieve.

So often we equate behaviour with intent. We see a kid labelled as bad instead of a kid making a bad choice or demonstrating poor behaviour.

We don’t see the underlying trauma, or the lack of appropriate role models, or the negative attention being better than being invisible.

The behaviour is where the attention falls, not the unmet needs of the kid. What’s really challenging about this is that even when the needs and supports are provided, improvements aren’t always immediately seen. They can be slow to show, because the kid doing the best they can doesn’t always change as fast as you’d want.

If you start with a belief that kids are always doing the best they can with the resources they have, then the behaviours become more understandable, and it becomes easier to be firm with high expectations and still treat a kid with the dignity and respect they deserve… even when their behaviour is less than ideal.

On the move

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I feel like my last month has been nothing but packing up and moving:

  1. Retirement and leaving a building that was my work home for 13 years.
  2. Moving everything out of my bedroom and two upstairs bathrooms for a renovation/upgrade.
  3. Hopping on a ferry (this morning) and packing up my daughter. She’s heading back to the mainland next month to do her Masters.

Putting life’s ‘stuff’ in boxes, weeding out the unwanted, and still holding on to more than we should.

Moves are healthy. They are the times we actually do reminisce and recall the memories we cherish. They are also the times we let go of things that we should have long ago. That said, the unpacking is not nearly as much fun. It’s one of those things you’ve got to slog through, but it sure feels good when it’s all done!

Quantifying the day

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Summer days can be tricky. The routine of work is gone and schedules are made up on the fly. Today I had a great workout then spent the next 2 hours in the kitchen doing meal prep. Then I had a doctor’s appointment and decided to drop some food off at a friend’s house.

I had forgotten that there was a World Cup semifinal game and was lucky enough to join my friend for the second half, where all 3 goals were scored. As exciting as that was, I didn’t have a lot of sleep last night and was practically falling asleep on the couch. I came home and had a 20 minute nap before a massage therapy appointment this afternoon.

Now I’m home and heading out in a bit for dinner at a restaurant with my wife and our niece. Yesterday at noon, the only thing scheduled for today was my workout and the massage, everything else sort of came up after that. Looking back on the day now, it has been quite busy, which sounds ridiculous to say when a nap was part of the day.

I guess this is good preparation for retirement. What will constitute a busy day will be so much different than what the work day usually entails. I think I’ve had practice with summers off, but I do believe it’s going to feel quite weird when I see my wife heading off to work in September and my summer mode will continue.

I know my mindset, and I think I will need to figure out how I will quantify my days when retired. I have no desire to just make myself busy, but I also know that I can completely waste a day away if I’m not careful. I don’t yet know what my measurements or scales will be, but I will find a way to ensure that I feel good about how I spend my days.

I spent my day very well today.

Stuck on repeat

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I’ve been restarting my workout playlist over and over again. Starting the first song for every set I do. I’ve also been choosing the same 2 songs over and over again when I’m in my car.

I wonder why sometimes I fixate on a handful of songs and just want to hear them over, and over, and over again? What is it about my brain that finds comfort with the same music on repeat.

I’m not like that with TV, movies, or even books. Even some of my favourite movies I’ve only seen once. But the right dong? I can play that on repeat long enough to drive anyone else crazy.

Is this just a me thing?

My last paper book?

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I took a break from reading (listening to) books for a while. I finished a fantasy fiction back in December and then got on a streak of only listening to podcasts. Usually I find a good non-fiction or two between school breaks, then go back to a good fiction on holidays. But this March break I didn’t end up listening to anything and the school year-end (career-end) was too busy to start anything new.

It’s weird, but I do not remember what year was the last time I read a physical book? It might even have been pre-Covid… I honestly don’t remember! In fact, I haven’t read a digital book either for just as long. I’ve read countless articles, but a paper book is just not something I do anymore. There are books I’ve received as presents, of which I’ve liked the recommendation, and so I’ve purchased the audiobook version. There are two books at my bedside that I want to read, they are in a sort of ‘up soon’ category for me… but not until the audio version is available.

As I write this it kind of baffles me how much I’ve converted to audio. I mean, I don’t know if I’ll ever read a physical book again? I’m sure I will at some point, but I am realizing now that the act of reading another physical book will be an anomaly rather than the norm. This bothers me a little, but not enough to change my habits.

I still love a good book, but it seems like I’m really done with paper.

It’s not cold, it’s honest

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I have a strong childhood memory of my Grandfather – Papa B. – Leon Bernstein. I’ve previously shared how to me and many others he was a ‘giant’! He quietly helped hundreds of people, he was one of the kindest people I’ve ever known, and he was a people’s person… It didn’t matter if they were a gardener or a doctor, a grocery store clerk or a Prime Minister, Papa B. was someone who treated everyone with honour and respect, and everyone saw this in him.

One day a person in the community died and I was there when Granny B. told Papa about the person dying. My grandfather’s response surprised us both. Imagine a grey haired Polish Jew speaking with a West Indian accent saying, “Oh shite, bu(t) he was a real jack-ass!”

Granny retorted, “Leon, you can’t talk about a dead man like that, it’s rude.”

My grandfather responded, “What? If he was a jackass in life, you think he gonna be any different in death?”

At the time, this totally stunned me. I had always seen my grandfather as a person who only saw the good in people, I don’t think I ever heard him speak ill of anyone before this, it just wasn’t his nature. Now, older and maybe wiser, I understand this a little better.

When you spend your life seeking the good in people and doing good for them, you learn that not all people are the same way. You see the self-centred, the selfish, the assholes, and the jackasses, and you realize they don’t deserve the kindness you give others.

It’s not rude, it’s good calibration. I didn’t know the person who died, but if my grandfather called him a jackass, I’m glad I never met the man. The reality is that such a statement isn’t cold or rude, it’s just honest.

Some people carry with them anger, hate, selfishness, and/or a mean streak that creates more distress than calm, more hurt than joy. And quite frankly in death they deserve to be identified for the character they were in life.

No need to spend time harbouring their ill intent, just acknowledge that they are gone, and continue on as you were before you heard the news. There are so many good people in the world that deserve attention while they are still alive, spend time appreciating and respecting them. Leave the dead jackasses behind and move on.

Routine Ownership

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I heard this quote by Alex Hormozi from Chris Williamson’s Modern Wisdom podcast:

“…if you cannot function without your routine, your routine owns you, you do not own it. Full stop.”

At first this hit me hard. I’m so committed to my routines that I thought he was talking directly to me… a metaphorical gut punch of insight that I needed to hear. That was my first instinct. Now I see it differently.

Basically this is true if you are obsessed with your routine, but otherwise it’s healthy. Only if your routine is costing you your wellbeing or your relationships with others would I agree that a routine owning you is an issue. Beyond the routine costing you in a very unhealthy way, you need the routine to pull you, to ‘own’ you in a way, or it wouldn’t be a routine.

We have some routines that are non-negotiable commitments. For example, if you have kids, you need to feed them. You don’t break the routine and not feed them dinner. But if the routine (or habit) is something negotiable, like meditation, or working out, or a minimum number of steps in a day, for example… Then there are always reasons to break the routine, or break the streak. If you don’t let the routine own you, it will quickly not become routine.

The routine needs to own you or it will no longer be something you regularly do. It’s that simple. If I’m headed to bed, exhausted, and I haven’t written my daily blog post, it’s easy to say, ‘I’ll just skip today.” But then it’s easier and easier to have other ‘acceptable’ excuses… And I would not have recently achieved 7 years of daily blogging. It’s not that I can’t function otherwise, it’s not an issue that the routine owns me more than I own it. In fact, this is precisely what is needed to ensure the routine continues.

I’ll end where I started just two days ago when I said about ‘Streaks and hard things’:

1. Our streaks are part of our identity. They don’t define us, we are defined by the act of keeping them.

2. Do hard things. The effort is its own reward. I don’t know anyone with a hard-to-keep streak who isn’t also doing well in other aspects of their lives, and ‘crushing it’… A life with intentional hard things begets a life where challenges are met and overcome rather than seen as barriers and limitations. 

There might be a reason to stop in the future… but until then the streak will keep streaking.

And the routines will keep routining… but they’ve got to own you a bit for this to happen.