Monthly Archives: August 2023

Battling the inner demons

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I’m listening to a book now that has two main characters who are both cautiously interested in each other and doubting that the other person is interested in them. It’s a little painful because they should have recognized the other’s attraction by now. So, while as a reader I’m waiting for the inevitable, I do appreciate the author’s perspective on both characters self-doubt… and how they are fighting their inner demons about their own appeal, their own value of what they can offer to the other person.

I wonder how many relationships flounder not because of lack of interest, but rather lack of confidence? How many people don’t initiate intimacy for fear of rejection? It happens in books all the time. Is that indicative of what really happens, or is it more likely that the attraction is one-way? Is it more if an external imbalance of interest in one another or more internal conflict holding back advances?

How often do people succumb to their inner demons and not move forward? Not just in relationships, in their studies, in their jobs, in sports, and even in hobbies?

“I’m not good enough for that team, why even try out?” (Or worse yet, “Why practice more, it won’t make a difference.”

“They won’t want to hire me.”

“They don’t see my value, I’ll get rejected if I ask for a raise.”

“My photos aren’t good enough to submit in the contest.”

How often do our inner demons prevent us from trying?

The photograph

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Five unruly cousins on a park bench. Our uncle taking the photo. No chance of us all sitting quietly and smiling at the same time.

“Ok, here’s the deal,” my uncle says. “Pose for one nice one then I’ll let you do anything you want for the next picture.”

Here we are about 45 years later and only one of those pictures survived. Only one mattered enough to be blown up and framed. The smiles long faded to distant memory… but ‘anything you want’ was exactly want we wanted, and what we still want.

It’s amazing what you get when you let kids be kids.

Being different

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I’m lucky.

I’ve been an odd duck my whole life but I’ve rarely suffered consequences that many odd ducks do. I was 4’11” at the end of grade 9, the runt of the litter. But I had good friends that protected me from the bullying I could have faced.

My friends grew up looking at cars and dreaming about which ones they wanted. I looked at cars and the biggest difference I noticed was their colour. I couldn’t even identify their logos. I didn’t feign interest and so my friends would chat about acceleration and horsepower and didn’t care that I wasn’t contributing.

I saw the original Star Wars movies in theatres but was with a friend last night who was showing me all the sequels beyond the original 6 movies and I’ve barely seen any. I’ve also not seen most of the Marvel comic movies that everyone I know has seen. Not even most of the ones with my favourite character, Spiderman. And I only know of Thanos from 1 minute clips and memes.

I live in Vancouver and can’t name 3 current hockey players on the Canucks. Heck I can’t even name one. I’d struggle to name the cities of some of the expansion teams. I also don’t know the names of any current American or CFL footballers and can only name Messi in soccer because he’s in the news, but right now I can’t even think of his first name?

I grew up a scrawny kid that wasn’t good at playing sports, I didn’t know cars, didn’t stay up to date on movie lore, didn’t follow very many sports, and to this day know the lyrics to very few songs beyond Happy Birthday. I’ve also always been quite comfortable when I’m alone. When I put it this way, I sound pretty damn boring. 😂

Sure I wasn’t completely out of it. I did become a Maple Leafs fan and would go see hockey games with my buddies. I went to see movies with my friends, like Breakfast Club, Meatballs, and Back To The Future. And, I could tell the difference between a Pontiac and a Porsche. But when I look back I really didn’t fit in.

I joined water polo in my Grade 11 year and I was un-athletic and lacked any game sense, which made me (deservingly) the last person off the bench in games. But I was willing to work hard and was accepted despite my poor abilities. That acceptance allowed me to improve quickly and so despite my late entry into organized sports I got to play and coach competitively, and connected to some amazing people.

I also have pretty thick skin. I can get teased and it really doesn’t bug me. You want to pick on a weakness or a flaw, go ahead and I’ll laugh along with you. I am really only sensitive about being misunderstood. I dislike assumptions that people make, not actual things that make me different or odd.

I seldom if ever spend time trying to fit in. Yet over the years I’ve developed amazing friends that accept me for who I am. That’s why I started out by saying I’m lucky. I am. I could easily have been the odd duck, the outcast, the loner. But I’m just quirky old me, and I’m surrounded by wonderful, caring family and friends.

I’m just different. So are you. We all are. Enjoy your uniqueness and enjoy being different. I do.

Hard to build routines back

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I should have written this an hour ago. I was up, but I kept myself distracted. I should have worked out already, but I haven’t started. I’m probably going to do my meditation on my exercise bike to reclaim some time.

It doesn’t really matter today, because I can stroll into work at 8:30am and still spend a full day there. Only my secretaries will be in the building and my first meeting is at 11am. So it’s not like this wasted time hurt my schedule. But it hurts.

It hurts because it’s going to take a while before my routine is automated again. It hurts because it’s me pushing off things that are good for me. If this was next week, I’d have to skip my workout right now.

However the nice thing is that it’s not next week. It’s not like I have to scramble or miss anything. I’m just acknowledging that routines take time to develop and redevelop. It’s not easy leaving my routines for a full summer then jumping right back into them. But once I get my routine going again it feeds itself.

I feel the benefits of getting a whole list of things done for myself before I even start my workday. Writing, meditating, stretching, and working out, all done before I even shower to start my day. The only hard part is now, it’s when the pattern isn’t set and I actually have to make an effort to do it. By early next week it will just be what I do when I wake up: Routine initiated.

Today it was a slog.

Not just lifespan, healthspan

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Dr. Peter Attia is an expert in longevity and he talks about healthspan rather than just lifespan. Last summer I played water polo with a 73 year old, and I’ve met people a decade younger than him that struggle walking up a flight of stairs. It’s one thing to get old and yet another to live healthy for longer.

Have a listen to this podcast with Dr. Attia. If you aren’t interested in listening, here are two things to do for the rest of your life*:

1. Do cardio at least 3 times a week and one of those times get your heart rate up above 80% of your max for your age/health.

2. Do weight training 2-3 times a week and try to work at least one muscle to fatigue (hypertrophy).

Remind your body that you are young and you won’t just increase your lifespan, you’ll increase your healthspan.

——-

*I’m not a doctor and don’t play one on the internet. If you aren’t already healthy, please don’t start an exercise program without consulting health experts.

Backwards momentum

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Here is a news article shared with me today, “Quebec to ban cellphones in elementary and high school classrooms“.

I created this graphic and wrote about it in March of 2009, “Is the tool an obstacle or an opportunity?“:

Here is another image I created in March of 2010, “Warning! We Filter Websites at School”

Related to artificial intelligence (AI), I’ve written “Use it or fall behind“, “You can’t police it“, and “Fear of Disruptive Technology“. The third link also shared the images above.

How are we talking about, actually no, how are we implementing technology bans in public schools in 2023? In Canada? It would be comical if it wasn’t sad.

This is going to be a farce trying to police. Good luck getting students to take off their Apple Watches. Have fun trying to stop the texts and chats from moving onto their laptops. Enjoy confiscating student’s second phones, after they handed you their old phone first. Don’t think that will be a problem? You’ll also need to confiscate glasses too.

It’s time to realize that it’s better to manage rather than police these tools. Banning won’t work. That’s so 2009. It’s time to realize that while “It’s going to get messy“, “The challenge ahead is creating learning opportunities where it is obvious when the tool is and isn’t used. It’s having the tool in your tool box, but not using it for every job… and getting students to do the same.”

Manage the disruption, don’t ban it. Be educators, not law enforcers.

Staying in the discomfort

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A couple days ago at our start of the year administrators meeting, we had a presentation by Jo Chrona. She was presenting on learning in Indigenous and anti-racist education, and she said something that still sits with me. She talked about how the learning isn’t easy but the real challenge is sitting, and staying, in the discomfort.

This isn’t an easy thing to do. We spend our days as problem solvers. We see the challenges and the issues we face and we tackle them. But systemic problems are not something with a quick fix, and if we have a ‘fix and move on’ mentality, we aren’t really dealing with the underlying issues. If we move away from uncomfortable issues they don’t really get meaningfully addressed. If we don’t sit in the discomfort, we don’t learn or help our community learn.

But it’s not human nature to stay in an uncomfortable place. This needs to be intentional. Being vulnerable and having the hard conversations, rather than trying to immediately make things better, is when we can really reflect, listen, learn, and heal. And of these four things, listening is the most important. If we are fixing, we aren’t listening.

One of the powerful things about staying and sitting in the discomfort is that we only really learn things well when there is a struggle. And so when we allow ourselves time to struggle, to understand the struggle of others, we create the space for deep learning to happen. We create the opportunity for meaningful learning and meaningful change to happen.

Interview time

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Yesterday I interviewed 3 people for a teaching position. I took extensive notes. All 3 interviews were good, and I could see value in hiring any of them. I ranked the candidates 1-3 then I sent my notes to a colleague. I didn’t share any personal information with the colleague, just my notes. He ranked them in the reverse order that I did.

Very interesting.

I looked over my notes again, thought more about how the answers fit with the position and I can totally see what my colleague saw. Now I’m really stuck. I have no idea which way I’m going to go? I have one more interview today, then I’m going to call my colleague and hear his thoughts.

I don’t think bias plays into it. Both the candidate he and I liked are the same gender, and he had no idea based on the answers shared. But this really has me questioning my skills at hiring. Again, it’s hard because all 3 candidates are good. I think my bias, if I have one, might be experience, and both of these candidates have a lot more experience than the one we didn’t choose, what my colleague made me realize when reading over my notes was how much more relevant his choice’s experience was compared to my choice’s.

My lesson learned from this is that if I’m going to take notes, I need to take the time to read them. When I’m asking questions and trying to capture their responses, I’m not committed to analysis of the answer. Also, when I’m interviewing, the order I interview in matters because I have less to compare to with my first versus my last interview and that may create bias.

I need to do the final interview today, then I need to take the time to go over my notes one more time with an objective eye… and I’ll also call my colleague and confer with him. It’s hard to make a decision like this yourself when you don’t have a gut instinct or glaringly obvious choice to make. Sometimes it’s good to ask for help and get a different perspective.

Trips to the moon

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India just soft landed a spacecraft on the moon. It’s the first craft to successfully land in the South Pole region, where craters that never see sunlight might be hiding frozen water. Reading this article made me realize that, while landing a human on the moon hasn’t been done in decades, the ‘race to the moon’ has been alive and well since then.

I searched for ‘missions to the moon’ and found this massive list on Wikipedia. It was shocking to see how many there have been, and how many of those have been failures. I’m not sure what rock I’ve been living under but I had no idea that so many countries were part of this space race.

I hope this craft finds frozen water. It would be an amazing discovery. And with a human return to the moon planned by NASA in the next few years, I’ll be watching news about moon landings a lot more now. We certainly are living in fascinating times and I’m excited to learn more about our universe beyond the earth’s atmosphere from flights like this and from telescopes like the James Webb telescope. There is still so much we have to learn.

Back to the routine

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After 6 weeks holidays, I’m back to work today. While work creeped into these holidays a fair bit, it was the most ‘off’ I’ve been in years… and quite frankly I needed it. I spent over a month of this break away from home, and it’s nice to be back in my own bed.

I feel refreshed and ready for the new school year. The long hours don’t start until September, and so I can get acclimatized over the next couple weeks. This starts today with my writing, meditation, exercise, and stretching first thing in the morning.

I’m someone who both dislikes and requires good routines. I dislike them because they make the days seem a bit robotic, like I’m just going through the motions. I require (and even like) them because I can get a lot done and feel accomplished.

This holiday started really strong with maintaining my routines but my Toronto trip home was quite disruptive. I was stuck on Vancouver time, staying up until well after midnight in Toronto, but still waking up early. I moved a lot of boxes, but didn’t do any cardio, and I don’t think I meditated more than once in 11 days. I accomplished a lot helping my mom, but really broke my routine and ate too much.

But then again, I was on holidays, and had a wonderful time. I got to spend a lot of time with my wife, and a bit of time with my kids too. I think as school starts, I need to build time in with them as part of my routine as well. It’s easy to put in long hours and not make time for family… not on purpose, just by nature of the job.

Routines can help to regulate things that can normally be neglected. My morning routine lets me feel like I’ve accomplished something for myself before I start my job in the service of others. I think the next step is to routinize some quality time with family, or before I know it the school year is over and work was the only priority after my morning routine.