Monthly Archives: July 2019

Being still

Yesterday I went on a little fishing trip around Alice Lake, just north of Squamish, BC. Spoiler alert, I didn’t catch anything.

Before I began, I did my daily meditation on a log that extended into the lake, then I started my walking loop on the shoreline trail. There weren’t many places to stop and fish along the trail, but I enjoyed the quiet of each stop. It was late afternoon on a cloudy mid-week day and so the parking lot was bare, and there were few swimmers in the lake or hikers on the trails.

Nearly 3/4 the way around the lake I saw a log several feet from the shore and parallel to it. The log served as a harbour from the wind that rippled the water beyond it. The contrast on the surface was stark. On the far side, the lake was rippled and murky. On the shoreline side the water was smooth as glass, a mirror for trees and the sky above. The log served as the dividing line, separating the two distinct surfaces as if the log were a rift between two different realities.

It didn’t seem real. One lake, two very different surfaces, a single log creating the separation. I began to think of how we can do this in our minds. We are surrounded by chaos, or distractions, or by the stresses of work, and yet we can tuck these distractions away, for a moment with loved ones, or for a favourite hobby, or for a quiet moment alone. We can compartmentalize moments of stillness in times that are not remotely still.

We are capable of this, but do we do it enough? Do we create the time and space for our minds, or parts of our minds, to be still?

Campfire time

Think of the changes in our world over the past 150 years. Compare that to the changes that would have happened over 150 years, if we were thinking about 1,500 years ago. In other words, think of how insignificant the changes would be then, compared to recent history, if we compared 1500 to 1650AD. Although Galileo’s Science expanded the universe beyond an earth-centric view, his views were hardly ‘universal’, and technological advancements in all the 1500’s would be shadowed in comparison to any decade of the 1900’s.

But when I look at a campfire, time and technology fade away. The flames dance around the wood exactly as it would have danced 1,500, 15,000, and even 150,000 years ago. Ancient man was as mesmerized by the flames as I am today. The desire to stare, to feed the flames, and to stand close enough to feel the heat are likely similar for millions of humans that came before me.

Campfire time is timeless; a bond of humankind through the ages… a chance to connect with our primitive ancestors and see a world that they shared with us.

Free advice

I just read some advice for CEO’s, and this is what the 3 tips boiled down to:

1. Don’t risk bankrupting the company.

2. Don’t do something you’ll regret.

3. Make choices that will better society.

I usually site my sources, but there is absolutely nothing here to give credit for.

Let me give the same advice to anyone, making any decision, in any situation, but I’ll do so in two bullets:

1. Don’t be an idiot.

2. Make good choices.

Feel free to not give me credit for this ‘profound’ advice.

We are constantly exposed to tips and tricks given in list formats:

• 3 things to remember when…

• 5 ways to get…

• 6 reasons not to have a list with 6 points. (Ever notice lists never seem to total 6, 8 or 11?)

• 7 tips to help you…

• 10 videos that will change the way you think about…

• 12 lists that help you make better lists. 😜

To see some of these lists, shared online, you need to click ‘next’ to get to the next tip, so that the website can maximize the advertising revenue after the list’s click-bait title draws you in.

So, let me give you some free advice on taking advice. But first, I encourage you to ask yourself what you are hoping to gain when you click on advice lists. (Yes, the irony of that statement is not lost on me.)

1. If advice is worth taking… take it. (Channeling Yogi Berra)

2. If advice is worth taking, read it out loud. Hearing yourself say the advice is better than being told the advice by others.

3. If advice is worth taking, ask yourself how to make it actionable? Thinking, ‘That’s good advice’ is not as effective as asking yourself, ‘How can I implement that into my life?’ – or asking yourself a similar question.

4. If advice isn’t perfect, change it. Tailoring advice to fit you is a possible way to make it easier advice to follow. (Note the addendum below.)

5. When taking advice, be brutally honest with yourself. For example, watch out for tip 4 above. Are you changing the advice to make it easier to avoid taking good advice, or are you changing it to make the advice more meaningfully relevant or actionable? It’s easy to disregard good advice if it is good, but isn’t easy to do.

6. If advice is stupid, make fun of it. Being critical gives you perspective, and you might be able to learn something from inserting humour.

There you have it, free advice from me. Take it, leave it, add to it, make fun of it. I don’t take my-advice-giving-self too seriously, you probably shouldn’t either. 😃

Sleep

I’ve never needed a lot of sleep. I can’t lay in bed beyond 8 hours without developing a head ache. I thrive on 6-7 hours sleep, and can operate on 5 hours sleep for several days in a row… although if I do this too many days in a row, it does affect my productivity and focus. I know others have noticed this, when I have abused my minimum sleep patterns.

When I’m going to get less that 6 hours, I do a breathing exercise before falling asleep to help get a boost of oxygen into me. I don’t care if it is physiological or placebo, the fact is that I wake up feeling like I’ve had more sleep when I do this with intention.

When I was starting out as a teacher, a buddy of mine told me that I was going to die 10 years early because of my lack of sleep. That night at about 1:30am I sent him an email that essentially said, ‘I’ve done the math… if you live to 85 and I live to 75, in my lifetime I will have been awake longer than you.’ 🤣

I’m fascinated by people’s interest in sleep. For some, extra sleep time is treasured. For me, it is lost time. I don’t consider unconscious time as time well spent.

That said, I love short naps. My perfect schedule would be sleeping between midnight and 6, with a 20-45 min nap between 1 and 2pm. I think I was designed for a siesta culture.

Does wanting only 6-7 hours of sleep a night make me an anomaly? I’m I fooling myself into thinking I need less sleep than I should get? Have I convinced myself that some unhealthy habits are ‘good enough for me’?

I’d say, ‘let me sleep on it’… but I won’t. I’m happy to delude myself at this point, and spend more time awake.

New and improved

I grew up with the 3R’s: Reduce, Reuse, and recycle. But there’s one more ‘R’ that I think is not just important, but extremely fascinating.… And that is Repurpose! You can argue that ‘repurpose’ is a form of ‘reuse’, but to me they are different enough to deserve separation.

The image that I shared is of 3 glass beer bottles, re-blown to make them into drinking glasses. Brilliant!

I love seeing objects being repurposed: A tin roof from a barn becomes the finish on a fireplace; An old ladder, hung horizontally, becomes a book shelf; An old bathtub becomes a love seat.

There is an artistic design element to this kind of repurposing that really appeals to me. I especially like when the item is identifiable for what its old function was while in its new use. Creativity and ingenuity come alive when an item is cleverly repurposed.

Data hoarders

I have thousands of photos on a computer that I can’t turn on. I have files on floppy discs. I still have tape cassettes, records, and CD’s. I have videos of my kids on digital tapes that I can only play on the camera I filmed them on, although I’m sure I can still get them on to my computer if I tried.

And I have thousands and thousands of digital photos that will never make it into a frame. They will never see ‘the light of day’, and many of them might not even be seen by me again.

Talking with my buddy, Dave Sands, he mentioned that we have become data hoarders. But unlike those TV shows about outlier people that hoard physical things and clutter their homes and lives, we are all becoming digital hoarders!

Our phones used to be fancy if they could take half-MB images and now some phones are approaching 10MB. My first computer was a Commodore Vic 20 with 20k of memory (and I was excited to buy the 16k adaptor to get me to 36k), and now I wouldn’t buy a computer with less that 350G. We used to buy 250MB backup drives, now we are buying multiple Terabyte backup drives.

But will these drives be easily retrievable in 30 years? Or will we be searching for an equivalent to a tape cassette recorder, or an 8-track player, to somehow get our data back? Or, how easy will it be for others to access this data as we share more and more of it in the cloud?

Beyond the fear of others getting access, will we even want this data? When was the last time you looked at a backup file or drive that has data you no longer have on your computer or phone?

We have become digital hoarders, all of us. What implications does this have for us, or more specifically, for our future selves?

Why blog daily?

“For years, I’ve been explaining to people that daily blogging is an extraordinarily useful habit. Even if no one reads your blog, the act of writing it is clarifying, motivating and (eventually) fun.“ ~Seth Godin

I enjoy writing, but I’m slow at it. So, when I get busy, I don’t write. This has really hampered my sharing on my Pair-a-Dimes for Your Thoughts blog. At one point, I was constantly thinking in blog posts. I enjoyed this. I would think of a concept or idea, expand it in my thoughts, then wrap it up on my blog. But I’ve written less and less and so that ability to create a full narrative around an idea has faded. I miss doing that.

So, what can I do to get that back? I need to practice writing; to practice thinking in story; to make writing a routine and expectation – not just something I wish I did.

When I started Daily Ink years ago, I was going to hand write a journal and then take a photo of the writing (images are gone from moving this blog around before finally getting DavidTruss.com)… This digital sharing of analog writing was to be a blending of two worlds. It didn’t stick. Then I shared links and videos with a small commentary (I might still do that occasionally), but now this is about (re)finding my joy in writing.

It might go to an audience of just one, but I’ll share it publicly, and hopefully anyone reading this, besides me, will enjoy the writing journey I’m on.

What’s a habit that you want to develop? And what can you do right now to get it going?

Slow starts

Summer is a time to rest for educators, but it can be hard going from 100 miles an our to 1 mile an hour without a little lethargy kicking in.  For me, it’s my morning routine. With no time constraint to push me, I can wake up early and get almost nothing done before the day really begins. Today, for example, I’ve had my coffee, I’ve done my meditation, and I read an interesting article on LinkedIn. Beyond that, I haven’t really done much in an hour and 45 minutes. Bleh.

Part of me wants to rationalize that it’s ok, but then part of me just wants to complete my routine… Finish writing this #DailyInk, get my exercise done, shower and really start my day. By that, I don’t mean that my day starts after this routine, I mean that my routine really starts my day!

I’m in a quiet house, everyone else still sound asleep, I’m feeling refreshed (I don’t need more sleep), and yet I’m being hard on myself about my slow start. Why? I think that I thrive when I’m intentional with my time. Even if that time is entertainment, or giving myself a break. But watching time disappear unintentionally is painful.

Part of my plan today is to create a list of ‘starter’ ideas for my daily write. I think that if I can get this done early, I’ll feel better about how my day started and that will be a self-fulfilling prophecy for the rest of the day. On that note, I’ve just added a new Daily Ink idea to my Notes on my phone: Why #dailyink. Let’s see what time I get that completed tomorrow?

I got this

I was not a swim coach. I coached water polo and I did a level one swim coaching course, and there I was coaching the season’s first swim practice at a high school with over 10 years of back-to-back championships. It was a small 25 yard pool with 5 lanes, including the diving board lane that didn’t have a diving block. 124 students showed up.

It was mayhem. I saw a sea of arms, flailing, splashing, and colliding, despite my instructions to ‘stay right’, and not to flip turn with so many people in each lane. This was crazy, what did I get myself into? I can’t do this!

Then I called for everyone’s attention to begin the practice. I decided to do a few 50’s (two lengths of the pool) so that I could see students do the different strokes. Great in theory, but I quickly discovered that with 25 kids per lane, students couldn’t do a full lap without bumping into the lineup. This was ridiculous. What have I gotten myself into?

I blew my whistle, 4 or 5 loud blasts, and kids stopped and looked up. It got quiet. “Everyone out of the pool and onto the deck in the deep end. Stay in your lane lineups.”

“Ok, here we go. I want you to swim one length, then get out and walk back to your lane. Go 5 seconds apart. You can dive or jump in, your choice. Any questions?”

Now, I had order. But watching these swimmers go by was still overwhelming. That stroke looks good, that one is awful. That student is pulling his hands out too early. This student is doing something wrong, but I don’t know what?

Then it happens. I see a beautiful stroke. Elegant. Fast. The student is passing the the boy in front of her at just past half a length, despite his 5-second lead. At my knowledge base, I have nothing to teach her. But maybe…

As she walks by me I ask her, “do you swim with a club?l

‘Yes.’

“Can you do me a favour?”

‘Yes, sure.’

“Please go over to the other side of the pool and help coach lane 1.”

And so it begins. I find the next good swimmer, ask if they swim club, and ask them to ‘take a lane’ and help.

The practice ends with 7 coaches, including me. I break up the schedule so that I never have to face everyone at once anymore. And I decide that I actually am a swim coach.

I got this.

The spaces in between

It had been a few years since Jerry and I met face to face. I arrived at his house, greeted him with a hug, then went in to say hello to his wife, Sandy.

I met Jerry on the first day of university over 32 years ago, and I was with him at the party where he met Sandy.

Then off Jerry and I went on a fishing trip. The years apart melted away and we had fantastic day together. It wasn’t two distant friends reconnecting, it was two great friends melting away the time in between our opportunities to meet face to face.

Jerry doesn’t ‘do’ social media, and so I don’t connect as often with him as I do with others that are geographically distant. So, it will likely be at least a couple years before we connect again. Some of the stories will be retold, others might be forgotten, but the time together will be treasured, no matter how long the space is in between our visits are.