Monthly Archives: August 2024

First official day back

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I’m headed to our school board office this morning for our first admin meeting of the year. There are years when this day arrives and I sit in bewilderment wondering what happened to my summer? But this year is one of those years where I’ve felt like I’ve had a wonderful break and I’m ready for the new year.

My regular routine starts today. I’m not writing this at a random time of day, or squeezing my writing in right before bed (like last night). Rather, I’m up early, I’ve already meditated, and I’m getting on the treadmill as soon as I publish this. It feels good to be back to my routine.

The new year brings with it both excitement and trepidation. I always start the year with specific goals in mind, and I feel enthusiastic, yet apprehensive. The year always holds so much promise. New plans, new students, new and unexpected scenarios all lie ahead.

There is a lot of prep work to do, but no amount of prep makes you feel 100% prepared. Planning only gets you so far when you are dealing with so many people in different roles. You might be calm and ready, but others will be nervous and unpredictable. No matter how well planned you may be, unexpected things will happen.

Schools are places of growth and learning, and real learning doesn’t happen smoothly and with conformity. Things don’t always go as planned. Yet, that’s part of the excitement. The unknown, the unexpected, the surprises along the way, the connections you make, the solutions you work on, and the collaboration required, are all part of what makes this job exciting and unique.

It’s the first day back, and so a whole new adventure begins…

Competence builds confidence…

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I love this statement by Dr. Alize Pressman,

“Competence builds confidence, not praise.”

So much pushback from kids comes from the frustration, or fear, of failure. Celebrate the path to little wins, focus on what they can do on their journey to doing more difficult things… and students start to shine.

Praise builds expectations of repeat performances. When students can’t hit those targets they lose confidence, or they stop trying… because it was so hard to get that praise and they aren’t convinced they can work that hard again. Or worse, they did work harder but didn’t hit the mark worthy of praise anyway. How disheartening is that? It’s definitely not a confidence builder.

“How did that make you feel?” is a question that fosters a student’s confidence. “That looks amazing, good job!” is a statement that puts pressure on repeated performance, and fosters performance anxiety.

“Competence builds confidence, not praise.”

Practicality over sentimentality

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My brother-in-law was speaking to my father-in-law about moving into an assisted living home from a rancher. He said, “I guess practicality needs to be a priority over sentimentality,” and my father-in-law agreed.

Moving isn’t easy. Downsizing isn’t easy. Letting go of things with sentimental value isn’t easy.

The knowledge that ‘we can’t take it with us’ on the next journey anyway offers little solace. Furniture, framed pictures, books, souvenirs, trinkets, antiques, old treasures and keepsakes all hold memories within them. Reflections of the past stir, and the desire to hold on to yet another item, another memory, pulls at the heartstrings.

Eventually realization kicks in… practicality over sentimentality. You just can’t take everything with you.

Alone time

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I just had a few days with a lot of alone time. I enjoyed it, but was really not focussed on anything I hoped to do. It reminded me of how much I rely on my habits and routines to keep me ‘in check’. I don’t necessarily use free time well, I get distracted and I’m easily entertained.

I never get lonely, and can spend time on my own without being bored or needing company… but I also need goals and tasks or I can just get lost in my own world. A perfect example is today I learned about Ed Witten, and then I spent almost two hours watching videos, most of which explained things beyond my full comprehension, but I was both engaged and lost… and again I was fully entertained.

It’s the power of being an introvert… even when I’m on my own, I never feel alone.

On Repeat

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I have an eclectic taste in music. From Zeppelin to Taylor Swift, Black Eyed Peas to AC/DC, Eminem to Vivaldi, Kitaro to the Violent Femmes… I don’t care who the artist is. I hear a song that hits me the right way and I’m hooked. When a song strikes a chord with me (literally and figuratively) I get a bit obsessed.

Right now that song is Last Man Standing by Livingston.

I’m listening to it now… on repeat while I write this. 

‘On repeat’ used to be so much harder. Now I just click the repeat icon twice on my iPhone and the song plays until I change the setting. 

I can remember lying down on the floor in the living room next to my parent’s record player and getting up after the song played so that I could lift the record player arm and gently put it back to the start of the song again, and again, and again. And when I say I remember doing this, I’m not exaggerating. Despite the memories going back 40-45 years I can still remember the songs I did this with: Queen’s ‘Another One Bites the Dust’, The Carpenters ‘Top of the World’, Lipps ‘Funkytown’, Led Zeppelin’s ‘All of My Love’, and Pink Floyd’s ’Mother’… I wasn’t joking when I said my tastes were eclectic. 

Later I improved my ‘on repeat’ skills with a Radio Shack tape recorder.

I can remember having an entire 45 minute tape side with nothing except Soft Cell’s ‘Tainted Love’ and The J. Geils Band’s ‘Freeze Frame’. The songs don’t just alternate, they were in the order that I was able to record them from a pop rock am radio station. It was an art form simultaneously hitting the play and record button on the tape machine just when the DJ stopped talking, and still maximizing the song’s intro that he was talking over. 

My recent obsessions before my current one were Taylor Swift’s ‘Maroon’, Colin Hay from Men at Work singing an acoustic version of ‘Overkill’, Sean Brown’s ‘Higher Baby’, David Wilcox’s ‘Breakfast at the Circus’, Mia Morris’ ‘Gone My Way’, and Michaela Slinger’s ‘Petty Things’. 

I have no idea what song or even what genre will tickle my musical fancy next, but until then, I’ll be choosing between these most recent choices ‘on repeat’.

Typecast

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I’m watching a Jason Statham movie. Now this is a guy who has been typecasted as a specific kind of hero: The lead actor who will beat people up, shoot them, and either bend the law to his favour or be on the wrong side of the law and yet still be the guy you are rooting for.

Not everyone gets typecast quite as strictly as Jason, but watching this movie got me thinking… How do people typecast me? What do they expect from me? And do I deliver as expected?

I think so. I don’t think I surprise too many people. I’m pretty consistent, and don’t feel I need to be performative. Actors get typecast into roles and have to play those roles. Regular people just are the roles they become. Sure there are bumps along the way, and I certainly did a few uncharacteristic things in my teens and early 20’s, but since then I’ve been pretty much what people expect of me.

That’s not a bad thing. Well for some people it might be. As a simple example, some people are known to always be late, lateness becomes expected. There are more serious things that people might not want to be known for, but there are many, many things that you can be typecast as which are positive.

You can be loyal, kind, fair, reliable, loving, thoughtful, even playful. The question is, if you were an actor, how would you be typecasted? If you don’t like your own response to that question, maybe it’s time to play a new role.

Secret Origin of the Enneagram

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The Enneagram.

A shape that has been around for hundreds of years. It has esoteric significance and it has been used as a model for personality types for years.

But something is missing… and that’s the origin of this unique shape.

Not anymore. Joe Truss discovered, or rather uncovered, the following unique origin story of the Enneagram. Perhaps the Sufis of the past knew, but this knowledge was lost: The 2-Dimensional Enneagram has 3-Dimensional roots. Enjoy this short video to learn more: Secret Origins of the Enneagram.

“The Enneagram is a 3-Dimensional structure which manifests through the vertices of the icosahedron.” ~ Joseph Truss

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And if you think this is interesting, Joe has also uncovered the tetrahedral structure of our universe… if you know a physicist who can challenge these ideas, both Joe and I invite them to break this theory apart: We Live in a Tetraverse.

Please share with people whom you think might be interested.
Thank you.

Too many tools

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I’m editing a video and I’m struggling to do it well in one place. I’m using Descript for most of my editing, but I wanted to put in a narrated slide show before the video and Descript wasn’t making the intricate edits I wanted without a major amount of effort. So, first I used Garage Band to edit the audio (after recording it on my iPhone). Then I used iMovie to put that together with the slide show (after making it in Powerpoint). Then I added the recorded slideshow into Descript.

I recognize my frustration is my own fault because I haven’t done these kind of thing in almost a year, and so now I barely remember the tips and tricks that used to come naturally to me. That said, I’m also frustrated because Garage Band and iMovie have had updates that put things in unfamiliar places for me. These updates seem to complicate rather than improve the user interface (UI). Meanwhile, the Descript UI seems improved, but it’s different enough from the last time I used it that I feel like I’m using it for the first time. Still, I could see myself eliminating the need for iMovie with the current Descript updates, so that’s one less tool I’ll use next time.

Most of my frustration is that I’ve spent over 15 hours doing about 5-6 hours worth of work. I spend so much time knowing what I want to do, and not knowing how, and then googling and watching YouTube videos that take 5-12 minutes to tell me 2 minutes worth of important information. I just want one tool to rule them all, and then I’m sure that I can get more done in less time.

AI and the collapse of a shared reality

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TikTok has introduced me to some very interesting content creators. One such person is Morten Rand-Hendriksen, who goes by the username @mor10web.

He shared this insight recently:

@mor10web

#AI image generation, the destruction of our shared perception of reality, and the inevitable collapse of democracy. Inspired by posts on the same topic from @Paige | AI Ethicist

♬ original sound – The Mor10 of the Web

After discussing the fact that people stuck in an echo chamber of like-minded people start to call a real photograph an AI generated fake… he says,

“Here’s what keeps me up at night: We’re converging on a point where it is easier to claim that real images are fake than it is to prove that images are generated using AI, or manipulated using AI. And that means we have no reasonable expectation of any image or any video or any audio being real. And we don’t have the tools or the media literacy to really do this analysis.

…and we are in the situation we’re in now where people can choose their own reality and live in a reality dysfunction. And AI provides the tools and capabilities to make that reality disfunction into our lived reality.”

Indeed, our shared reality has collapsed. AI generated fakes spread like wildfire through echo chambers of like-minded groups, and even when discovered to be fake, there is no effort to make corrections if the fake fits the group’s narrative… and any real media that doesn’t fit that same reality is easily dismissed as a fake.

Maya Angelou said, “We are more alike, my friends, than we unalike.” I would agree with that when we had a common shared reality, but I question it now in a world filled with AI generated fakes, and a lack of media savviness to determine what really is real. The collapse of a shared reality is a threat to our world, whether the split is socioeconomic, political, or religious. We are increasingly growing unalike.

Blackberry season

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For me blackberry season is bitter sweet. I love the taste, and enjoy picking and eating them, but they are also a reminder that summer is coming to an end. Blackberries, or blackblellies as my oldest daughter first called them, are so unique.

I’ve already shared that,

“Blackberries are a unique fruit. I can eat a handful of raspberries, strawberries, or blueberries, and it doesn’t matter how many I put in my mouth, I enjoy them all the same. That’s not the case for blackberries. Blackberries taste better when you have one at a time. Two blackberries in your mouth are not as enjoyable as just one.”

So, carefully, watching for thorns, I search for ripe berries. I pick them and place them one-at-a-time in my mouth… and I savour every one. Yes, summer is coming to an end, but I have the joy of blackberries to help soften the blow.