Monthly Archives: July 2019

What’s on your home screen?

I think it is interesting to see what people put on their phone’s home screen. It is a little peek into their personality. Where do they spend their digital time? What social media do they use? What do they do for entertainment?

I think I want to start a little informal research and ask people about their home screen preferences. What will I learn from that? Will it change what I keep on my home screen?

What do you keep on your home screen, and why are those things important enough to take up that space?

Dear Siri

You don’t get me (yet). I know you are trying, but you just aren’t smart enough. When I call my wife a dozen times on her cell, do you need to ask me on the 13th call if I want to call ‘home’ or ‘mobile’.

When I say words together many times over, don’t autocorrect to a similar phrase… know me, don’t make me the average of what most people want.

I wish you could tell me things about other apps, act as a concierge, and predict ways that you can be helpful without me asking.

I know it’s a lot, I know you’ll get better, I know you’ll eventually ‘get me’… I just want it soon.

Much appreciated.

Dave

What do you see?

When you say that you like nature, do you like viruses, cancer, and decay?

When you say that you enjoy the city, do you enjoy traffic, higher crime rates, and sewage systems?

When you say that you love someone, do you love their idiosyncrasies, failings, and character flaws?

When you say that you are interested in something or someone, what do you see? What do you choose to overlook?

When something or someone bugs you, how much does your disposition affect what you see?

Someone just took the last piece of a cake… are you pissed off that you didn’t get it, or genuinely happy for the friend that did get it? How much does a small decision like that affect your mood? Or your attitude towards your friend? Or your overall happiness in the next hour?

You have incredible power to decide what you see, and to create a universe in your mind based on these decisions.

What are you choosing to see, and what kind of life are you living thanks to these choices?

Photographs in my mind

We used to take our negatives to a film processor to have them developed. Then we waited. Long ago we waited for a week, and eventually that time was reduced to just an hour. We’d collect the envelopes of photographs and before we left the store we were going through our shots one-by-one.

This one isn’t focused. This one has a blurry arm from it moving during the shot. In this one her eyes are closed. In this one he looked away. And this one, yes this one goes in a frame.

I say this with a bit of nostalgia, for there was something I enjoyed about the process. About the not knowing how good a shot was until long after I took the shot. About the surprise of a shot being better or, sadly, worse than I thought.

Film also gave me something else that I miss. As a photographer using film, every click of the shutter costed money. This made me more selective about the shots I would take… and not take.

It is an odd thing that I have photographs burned into my memory, but they are photographs that I never took.

There is the lost kitten jumping after a minister’s tassels during a wedding. I was being paid as the photographer and didn’t want to ‘waste the shot’ since they paid me by the roll of film.

The shot I did not take of the salt flats of Utah that faded into the sky without a horizon line. A brilliant memory that probably would not have made a good photo anyway.

There was the shot I lined up at Pike Place in Seattle, of an older man sitting on the hood of a parked car enthralled in a book, while cops on the street behind him tended to a fender-bender. I can still see the image that I did not take, feeling like I was invading his privacy.

We seem so much more free to take photos now, always having a camera in our pocket, and not a concern of the cost of taking one more shot.

But of all the shots I didn’t take, the photographs that still linger in my memory. These come to me from an era when film was the only option and the cost of the next shot lingered in my mind.

Necessary evil

Life isn’t always great. Sometimes things don’t go as planned. Tragedies happen. Friendships fall apart. Misunderstandings cause discomfort. And sometimes you have to interact with people who just aren’t nice.

No one likes situations like these, but we don’t strengthen our character or our convictions when everything is going our way.

We don’t learn perseverance, perspective, fortitude or patience without encountering challenges. We don’t build resilience or resolve when the stars align and our universe is unfolding ‘as it should’.

When we face challenges, by nature they are not easy, they are not desirable.

Yet they are necessary if we want to learn and grow.

Commute Time = Reading Time

My commute is very short. I get to work in about 7 or 8 minutes, but it will often take me over 10 minutes to get into the building. It takes longer because I end up sitting in my car listening to an audio book, waiting to find a good place to pause.

If I need to pick up one of my daughters, the ride to them is ‘reading time’ for me, listening to my book, and when I pick them up, I let them choose the music we listen to.

When I get on my treadmill or go for a run, I’m listening to my book. Travel and commute time, as well as cardio time, have become ‘reading’ opportunities for me.

Last year at this time, I’d read about 2 books. I find my eyes fatigued at the end of a work day, and so I don’t end up actually reading (rather than listening to) books all that often. In fact, I’m only half-done the one paper book I started reading in March. Meanwhile, I’ve listened to 11 audio books and am on my 12th now since January.

Audible has been great, and I’ve really enjoyed books like The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin and Essentialism by Greg McKeown. These insightful books are especially wonderful because they are read by the authors.

Thanks to audio books, my commute time is actually enjoyable learning time. I find myself wishing I had a slightly longer commute to work… how do you use your commute time?

Holiday in a cup

I just read an article: Vacations won’t help your burnout, which states: “…‪many of us stress out at work as we prepare to take a vacation, only to face a pile of things to do when we return. What’s better? Carving out small slices of relaxation every day.‬”

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a customer, when I worked as a manager.

I was working at a tiny Starbucks on Denman, not far from Davie Street, across from ‘The beaches”, in downtown Vancouver. Two doors down was a shoe repair shop. The cobbler worked 6 days a week, and he came in for a triple-tall latte, 2 times a day.

One day we were chatting about vacations and I said something like, “I’m not trying to lose you as a customer, but do you realize that if you didn’t have your 2 coffees a day, you could have a pretty amazing holiday with your wife and kids each year, for the cost of those coffees?”

He took a sip, held up his personal Starbucks logo mug he always used, and said pointing to the cup, “Dave, this is a holiday in a cup, and I get it twice a day!”

How do you, or can you, create your own daily ‘holiday in a cup’?

Expand Your Horizons

We were cleaning out our garage on Sunday and my wife was sorting things for a garage sale.

She came across 2 home repair books I’ve used in the past and asked me if we should keep them. “Yes”, I said, remembering one of the book’s usefulness when replacing a toilet. Then “Actually no”, I said, remembering that I haven’t looked at either of those books in years, having gone instead to YouTube.

Just the day before, I couldn’t figure out how to remove an old-style door knob from our basement, and I watched a young boy on YouTube show me how… with his small hands and an off-camera voice that could not have been more than 12 years old.

We are so lucky to live in an era where learning something new is always within our reach. Not just home repair, but new skills and new approaches to the way we think, learn, work, and play.

What are you currently trying to do that you couldn’t do before? How are you expanding your horizons?

“If you only do what you can do, you’ll never be more than you are.” ~ Shifu, Kung Fu Panda 3

Super Powers

When I was younger, I wanted to be Spider-Man. He was the superhero I most connected to because he was a ‘normal’ kid that gained super powers. Unlike Superman, born on another planet, Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider and was thus transformed from normal to super human.

I think that was what I was most attracted to: I couldn’t become Superman, but I could become Spider-Man.

In reality, we all have superpowers.

We have the ability to be kind, make someone’s day, change people’s minds, help people learn, and even change their luck.

We can equally use our superpowers for evil.

How will you use your superpowers?

Alphabet Soup

Vocabulary is a currency in our world.

Vulnerable learners, English language learners, students with reading and learning challenges, all start with a deficit of this currency.

What are we intentionally doing to reduce this deficit?

We don’t all have to use big fancy words, but if our students aren’t articulate and can’t thoughtfully get their messages across, their futures are likely to be hampered.

Be it learning challenges or environmental challenges (some kids grow up in homes where they aren’t read to by an adult, or lack a variety of books, or struggle with a new language), some kids start off with a vocabulary deficit.

But vocabulary is the currency of communication, and how we are able to express ourselves is becoming far more valuable in our amazingly connected world.