Proximity matters

Leave a reply

I got to see my sister and cousin this weekend. It was so nice to connect. My sister flew in, but my cousin lives 40 minutes to an hour away depending on the time of day I’m travelling there. It’s not far, and yet it is. I remember reading a stat that if you move just an hour away from someone you are likely to see that person more than 80% less than when they lived closer. My visits to my cousin would suggest that stat is higher.

I enjoy the company of him and his wife very much. Good people. Yet I barely see them. It takes my sister flying in to make it happen. Why? Busy lives. Time flies by and an hour drive is 2 hours travel when you also have to go home… well a little less because an evening drive is usually shorter, but still, it’s a lot of driving. It’s the end of April and the next time I’ll see my cousin is probably early July, when I have a gathering planned.

People have asked when I decide to downsize, where would I want to live? I might fantasize about living somewhere tropical but the reality is my wife and I won’t move that far from our kids, and also, we’d like to stay pretty close to where we are now. Why? Because we already don’t see our friends enough, and moving away will just make this harder. Finding time for friends and family is a lot easier when you’re close.

Proximity really matters.

High contrast lives

Leave a reply

It’s amazing how differently people live in the world. Growing up in Barbados and moving to Canada in the late 70’s, I faced a fare bit of culture shock. This is quite a different experience than a student at my school who has only ever left the province to go one province over, and hasn’t even been to the USA, just a 30 minute drive away.

But even that contrast isn’t comparable to a friend who grew up in a village with no electricity or running water, who now lives in a gorgeous home a couple towns over from us. She shared how her first husband was embarrassed by her when they went to a big city for the first time and she was frightened to go on an escalator. She’s younger than me and she has lived in worlds that seem 100 years apart.

This exposure to different worlds extends beyond travel. I spoke to a 91 year old man today and he shared how his father never once hugged him, and so he made sure that his kids always got hugs. Some people break the trauma cycle, others get stuck in it. Again, the contrast can be so extreme.

We walk around blindly unaware of what challenges people have faced or are currently facing. We see kids acting out and blame them for their outbursts, unknowing of what challenges they face at home. We fall into patterns in relationships that are affected by past relationships both in positive and negative ways.

Some people are exposed to experiences you or I could not imagine. Some of them do so with poise and grace. Others struggle and deal with more than we could handle, and might not be able to handle it themselves.

People do the best they can with what they’ve got. We don’t always know where they have come from, or what they’ve had to deal with. We don’t see the contrast, and so maybe we shouldn’t be too quick to judge.

Close to the source

Leave a reply

Please visit Kelly Tenkely’s Substack and read, ‘Staying Close to the Source’. She starts with a wonderful metaphor,

“I was the kind of kid who loved to collect rocks. I was especially taken with any rock found in a stream or lake. Those rocks felt different. They seemed uniquely magical, luminous, and glittering just below the surface. Smooth, as if they’d been polished over time, their colors saturated and alive.”

… “Each time we visit a learner-centered school, I’m struck by that same kind of magic.”

I’ve had visitors to Inquiry Hub tell be they could feel this magic. They’ve described that this is a special place. They’ve been struck by the way our students share their learning experiences, and how open they are to articulate both their learning processes and their personal inquiries.

We still have percentage grades in grades 10-12, we are still a BC, Canada school providing our students with a regular diploma that they would get at any other school. But we offer opportunities that most students don’t get. We can’t compete with elective course offerings a big high school can provide, but we can have students design their own elective… but only after 1-2 years of doing shorter, less comprehensive, inquiries with continual reflection and sharing built into the process.

I’m not sure how this compares to the schools Kelly visited, but her post concludes with:

“May we stay closer to the source where learning happens. 

May we teach educators how to notice, how to listen, how to see the glitter. 

May we trust that teachers can sit beside learners and bear witness to their growth, without needing to pull it out of context to prove it exists.

Learning, when you’re close enough to see it, is unmistakable.”

This spoke to me, and reminded me of the special teachers and students I get to work with. I encourage everyone to read Kelly’s full post.

The right music

Leave a reply

Sometimes you can hear a song and you know it came to you at the right time.

Just the right song for just the right occasion.

And it can by any occasion, a high, a low, a wedding, a funeral, a moment of melancholy, a moment of joy. A song comes along and says, ‘Here you go, this is exactly what you need.

And it is.

Daily aches

Leave a reply

I was joking with a buddy yesterday and said, “What I wouldn’t do to have one week with no part of my body aching.”

I dealt with sciatic pain from December to March. I’ve been dealing with golfer’s elbow almost as long and it pops back unexpectedly, even when I’m not using it much. And now, I’ve got a deltoid pain that is making it hard to sleep comfortably.

The sciatic pain has caused me to reduce my cardio goals. I’ve also been less focused on lifting heavy and my buddy is coaching me on both better form, and also pacing myself in the gym… things I can struggle with on my own. And still the aches and pains persist.

Granted, I’m not in agonizing pain every day with my back haunting my every move, like I was 20 years ago, and I’m in great shape… but the aches! I’m tired of alway feeling like I’m on the mend.

I’m reminded of the quote, ‘Choose your hard.’

When I’m sedentary my back aches. When I’m working out, different muscles choose to ache. Well, I guess I just have to choose my ache. Yet I’m actually not joking when I say, when I beg, can I please get one week ache free, just to know what that’s like.

A bigger gig economy

Leave a reply

The gig economy is a system where people work as freelancers or take on side jobs for companies instead of having a regular full‑time position. Uber drivers are a great example of this. There are a few reasons why I think the gig economy is going to grow:

  1. High prices are making a side hustle of some sort essential if you want to enjoy things beyond what salaries allow.
  2. Companies like the structure because pay is based on performance rather than a set salary.
  3. Entertainment is shifting to live performances, gigs, as a primary form of earnings. Getting your music to stream is not enough to keep most musicians going without a concert tour.
  4. A trend now in social media, is to see a lot of affiliate marketing. Only the biggest of social media stars can make this a full-time living. For the vast majority affiliate marketing is nothing more than a gig economy.
  5. We are going to see a wave of AI trainers needed to train robots to do everyday skills. Work as a maid in a hotel? We’ll pay you to wear a GoPro for two weeks while you work. That video will train an AI that’s going to take your job less than a decade later.

Companies are afraid to hire full time staff. Money is better spent on technology than on training a human on a fixed salary. As a result, the gig economy is just going to get bigger and bigger.

Simplify rather than shrink

Leave a reply

I don’t remember where I heard this, but the concept has been on my mind recently:

Simplify rather than shrink.

The idea is that retirement doesn’t necessarily mean becoming less, but rather doing less. No I won’t be going into work anymore, and the titles and responsibilities will be less, but that doesn’t mean who I am will shrink. It’s way better to perceive the changes as simplifying my life. I’ll be able to wake up later than 5am, I won’t have to rush my morning workout, or race to get my writing done. On the contrary, I can work out for longer and write more.

I don’t have to rush the making of dinner, or choose a meal based on speed of preparation rather than preference. I won’t have to give up the quality and healthiness of a meal for convenience. I can also commit to some projects mid-week rather than waiting for the weekend.

This isn’t a shrinking of what I do, it’s expanding the things I want to do, while also simplifying my life. It’s removing the commitment to a job that can sometimes take 10 hours of my week day and creep into weekends, (if not in workload then at least in mental energy).

This frame of simplifying rather than shrinking is one than I think works for me. It’s a metaphor that allows me to get excited about my upcoming retirement. It allows me to see retirement as a wonderful opportunity to expand the use my time on things that allow me to be more of who I want to be. There will be no shrinking, there will definitely be some simplifying.

A hint of summer

Leave a reply

Today I was reminded that summer is coming. I’ve had some nice weekend mornings of sitting in the sun already this year, but before today I can’t say that I’ve really felt like summer is on the way.

This afternoon my wife and in-laws went for a walk in a neighbourhood park that’s not too far from us. There were a couple baseball games happening and a group of people practicing cricket. There were a group of kids in the playground celebrating a 9th birthday party, and many others out enjoying the day.

The sun was shining, and I had to take my thin long sleeve shirt off, and was just in a T-shirt. Of course, I do live on the wet/west coast, and there will be some rain in the coming months. But today was a wonderful reminder that summer is just around the corner. I cherish days like this. I don’t even need to be outside all day, I just appreciate knowing that warm days are on the way.

Crunching again

Leave a reply

The jury is still out on whether my buddy and I are going to ‘Everest the Crunch’ in August, (climb the Coquitlam Crunch trail 37 times in 48 hours, to go up the equivalent height of Mount Everest)… but at least I’ve been back on the trail for the last 4 weekends. Before that I had to take 6 weeks off due to sciatic pain.

A commitment to my physio visits and exercises, regular massage, and of course some extra rest, has all lead to my recovery. Today we did the most we’ve done in a while with 2 trips up, 2 extra loops of the 457 stairs section, and one trip down, (we start by dropping a car off at the top), and seven hours later I feel no pain.

My buddy Dave has taken my injury in stride and isn’t rushing us back to where we were before I had to slow down, and so I don’t feel any pressure to push more than I should. That said, we are just 4 months away from the challenge and if we don’t ramp up soon, our bodies won’t be ready for 37 treks up the hill. I feel ready to push a bit harder, but not ready yet to say this will be a ‘go’ in four months.

Still, the 6 week break was way longer than our previous gap of maybe 2 weeks since we started doing the Crunch in January 2021, and it feels wonderful to be back… and more importantly, pain free. We are crunching again! Whether this leads to the challenge in August or not, this cherished time with my buddy is back on track.

6am Gym Goers

Leave a reply

I’ve been going to a gym, rather than doing home workouts, for about 5 months now. My usual time is to get there by 6am. One thing about the 6am crowd is that they are dedicated. You see all the same faces almost every day. And, you start to acknowledge the regulars when you see them. 

I always see one guy who paddles with a weight like he’s paddling a canoe. He does a lot of exercises I don’t really get… but he’s there every day doing his routine. There’s little miss cardio who attacks the elliptical for long periods and at a pace that I could never maintain. There’s the calisthenics dude that pushes his body to the max on every set he does, with an effort that I’d struggle to maintain day-after-day. There is the somewhat self-conscious overweight guy who keeps to himself, who works hard and ends his weight session on a stationary bike. There’s the old guy (I might call him that, but he’s probably just a few years older than me) who chats up everyone, and is always smiling. There is the girl who does RDL’s with such a perfectly straight back that I think you could use her back as an ironing board – impressive! There are two couples, the younger ones work out together, the older ones are obviously together but don’t spend a lot of time on the same machines and do completely different workouts. I could go on and on… because I don’t just see these people once in a while, there are there every weekday. 

I often wonder what their back stories are? What got them to be diehard gym goers who are so dedicated? What makes them push, what makes them commit to consistency? Showing up consistently and dedicating regular time to being healthy is a life changing habit. It doesn’t matter if a person is trying to build muscle, increase their max VO2, or just in maintenance mode. It doesn’t matter if they do exercises that make sense to me, or if they struggle with good technique, or if they lift way heavier or way lighter than me. These gym goers have one thing in common… they start their day in the gym. I tip my hat to the 6am gym goer crowd.