Author Archives: David Truss

Don’t know what you don’t know

I broke my bow a couple weeks ago, and bought a used but better bow than the one I had. This new-to-me bow was used by a top Canadian archer at the World Championships a few years ago… it’s a better bow than I’ll ever need. But I’m having such a hard time with it.

To be clear, it’s not the bow, it’s me. I’m a go cart driver trying to drive a Ferrari. With my old bow, I could tell when I was shooting well and when I struggled. With this bow, I’m shooting and it feels good, but with inconsistent results. Good shots and bad shots feel the same. Worse shots feel like the bow has a mind of its own, torquing in my hand after my shot, the string hitting my arm. I never had this issue with my old bow.

Here’s the challenge, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong? I don’t know what I don’t know. I’ve made all kinds of adjustments and still get inconsistent results. Yesterday while practicing, my buddy who is helping coach me heard me complain (again) that the bow feels too narrow on my hand, and I don’t know why.

He said, ‘Well, you can keep complaining and do the same thing, and get the same results. Or you can stop and try to fix it.’ And he sent me to get cardboard and tape, and try to make the grip wider to see if that helped. Covid makes these conversations a bit tougher, because he’s making suggestions from a distance, where we would normally be shoulder-to-shoulder working this out. So, he shot a couple more rounds while I hacked away at cardboard and wrapped my handle in tape.

It seemed to work, a lot of inconsistencies went away. I started shooting better, and the string stopped hitting my arm after my shot. I came home and wrapped a new handle with better material than cardboard, surrounded by some tennis racket over grip.

I’ll give this a try for a while. It might help considerably. It might be one of many adjustments I make. It might be something that promotes bad habits and I might need to undo it and start all over again. I need to remember that I’ve only had this bow for two weeks, and I’m still a rookie on a huge learning curve. Right now I’m in an experimental phase and need to shoot my next 1,000 arrows before I can consider my feedback valid enough to ‘know’ more. It’s hard to fix things when you don’t know what you don’t know…

Stealing attention

Yesterday I received 3 spam phone calls. I also deleted a number of emails that were basically advertising products and services. Daily we are bombarded with unsolicited requests for our time and attention. Sometimes I take the time to block phone numbers and mark items in my email as junk and block the sender. Other times I just move on.

I wonder about the people behind these messages, especially the malicious ones designed to fool someone into giving up money in some form of scam. How do they rationalize their behaviour? What motivates them?

I can’t imagine waking up in the morning hoping to swindle someone as part of a successful day. I similarly wonder about jobs like paparazzi and gossip writers. And people who troll others on social media.

Our attention is limited, and there are people who spend their time trying to steal this resource (and other resources) from us. As much as we try to avoid it, it’s there. Sometimes it’s easy to skip, other times or I find these interruptions take too much energy.

If you want to be entertained, watch videos with a search like, “wasting scammer time”. It is entertaining to watch, and while somewhat vindictive, it feels like a worthy endeavour… not one I would do, but one I appreciate. I like to know that there are people out there making the effort to slow down and frustrate people who are malicious; people who are time and attention thieves. They deserve their attention being stolen too!

Silver lining vs grey cloud

I recently wrote this in a comment on LinkedIn, in response to my post, ‘Cruise ships and education‘:

“…the pandemic also has many thinking about coping and not thriving, being safe and not being creative.”

The pandemic has opened the door to look at things differently, but a year into this, my creative juices have slowed. I think about ideas and I see roadblocks. I tell students they can’t do things because of safety, rather than trying to get to ‘Yes’. I hold off on interesting projects that would add things to other’s plates. I feel my excitement wane when I get together for another online meeting, even if I like the topic of discussion.

I feel that opportunity is meeting fatigue. There is a saying that every grey cloud has a silver lining… but some grey clouds hide that silver lining. Sometimes the rain doesn’t even let you see the clouds. Right now the metaphorical rains are pouring for me. I’m getting work done, but I’m not thriving at work. I’m exercising regularly, but I’m going through the motions, in maintainance mode, rather than pushing myself. I’m writing daily, but I’m not getting lost in the creative act. I’m listening to a book, but not feeling like I’m enjoying it, and bouncing to podcasts that I’d normally love, but find my mind wondering, unfocused as I listen.

On Monday there was great news about how fast the vaccine would be coming to all Canadians that want it. It should have been exciting news, but I find myself doubting the timelines. In all honesty, I don’t know if I’m truly doubtful based on facts, or if I need to be doubtful because it would be painful to see that silver lining ahead of me and then be crushed that it does not come to fruition. I’d rather be pleasantly surprised than devastatingly disappointed.

“…the pandemic also has many thinking about coping and not thriving, being safe and not being creative.”

‘Many’ includes me. I’m seeing a lot of grey and not a lot of silver right now. I need to give myself permission to be in maintenance mode… To focus on caring for myself and those around me, and not beat myself up for coping rather than thriving.

_____

Postscript: I read this (long but well worth reading) article after writing the post above, and it struck a cord with me:

5 Pandemic Mistakes We Keep Repeating

…especially this part:

One thing that I didn’t balance with my thoughts above is that there are so many people who have handled this pandemic poorly, including those leading us, that in a way ‘coping’ is succeeding. We aren’t just fighting the pandemic, we are fighting misinformation, ignorance, and leadership choosing to follow the science only as far as political and economic agendas will allow… all clouds that hide the silver lining (and the hope for it).

My goal is to see some normalcy in early 2022. Anything before that isn’t just silver, it’s gold!

Ordering online is too easy

Sometimes it is just too easy to order things online. The draw to impulse buy something is strong. The incentive to buy in bulk, or more items than you need is exaggerated by a pricing scheme that invites buying excess. I needed golf tees to use to put my paper archery targets onto my target block. 25 tees would last a long time, 50 would last well over 2 years, but I got 75 because it was a great deal. It didn’t cost much more to get the extra 25 tees… but that little bit more was still money that I didn’t need to spend.

I don’t golf, and never visit golfing stores, so I don’t know how much I saved, buying from Amazon rather than from a place that has to pay high fees for retail space? I don’t think about the fact that a store like that is good to have in the community, and worth supporting. I also like the idea of not going to a store that I don’t need to right now. Not walking by people in isles, people who seem less interested in social distancing than they do in getting to the items that they are shopping for.

The appeal to just online shop rather than going to retail stores is strong. When the pandemic ends, I suspect online ordering habits won’t. I wonder what this will do to our local economies? If we will end up with less choices, and more ‘big box’ stores that have the draw of meeting many needs, because niche needs are easier to get online? I wonder if there will be a pricing reset for retail space?

I also wonder how much extra junk we are all buying, because more is better, and bulk items are cheaper? We live in a consumer product driven world and online shopping is an easy way to accumulate a lot of stuff we really don’t need.

Thoughts from Aldous Huxley, 1962

This past Christmas holiday I listened to the audio versions of George Orwell’s 1984 and then Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World back to back. The contrast is best described in a comic by Stuart McMillen, based on Neil Postman’s ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death’, shared below.

But before reading the comic take a look at this video interview of Aldous Huxley in 1962, Love Your Servitude:

Both Orwell’s and Huxley’s dystopian worlds are scary, but Huxley’s is a little more chilling in how it connects to the world we live in today.

Cruise ships and education

It’s going to be a long time before cruise ships are going to reintegrated into people’s holiday schedules. Covid-19 has probably hit their market as hard as any other market. I actually had my first cruise planned through the Mediterranean last summer, but with that cancelled and refunded, I have no plans to ‘do’ a cruse any time soon.

The pandemic has also massively disrupted schools… but I fear that things will be business as usual soon, and kids will be ‘doing’ school just like they used to.

What was learned from remote learning and altered schedules?

What skills became more important?

What skills and competencies should we focus on?

What can students do at school besides going to block after block of classes?

I hope that we don’t just jump back into the way things used to be. Just as many will be cautious about getting on a cruise ship any time soon, we should also be cautious about heading back to school like it was in 2019.

Rewind

A year ago we were heading towards the March break and, at the end of February, had no idea that we would return from the break doing remote learning. I was recovering from breaking my kneecap, and not mentioning Covid-19 or physical distancing yet here on my Daily-Ink. That changed in March.

What a year it has been! Part of me wants to call it a rollercoaster ride, part of me wants to call it a long straight drive on a deserted road through the prairies. No matter how you look at this past year, it is nothing any of us expected a year ago.

Rewind to the end of February 2011, I was a principal in China, and found out I’d be coming back to BC to be vice principal of the adult learning centre. This would lead me to my current position both with Coquitlam Open Learning and co-founding Inquiry Hub.

Rewind to February 2001 and my wife and I had a 1 year old who completely changed our lives. February 2002 our second was born.

Rewind to 1991 and I had not graduated on time from university and went to a different university to finish my degree, choosing this school so that I could play varsity water polo. This brought me back home and I ended up lifeguarding and coaching at a high school. I wouldn’t be a teacher today if I hadn’t made this move and got experience working with and coaching students.

How will I look at February 2021 a decade from now? Will it be a blur in the covid years, or will it be stepping out into a post-covid frontier? Maybe that’s going to be February 2022… I think we will have to keep driving the long prairie road for a while, and look forward to slow and gradual changes in the coming year.

Headspace

Yesterday I spent a good part of the day inside my own head. I don’t know if I’m the only one that experiences this sensation (or rather lack of sensation) or if it’s a quirk of the human condition we all experience? I was able to do my job, and I could interact with others, but I felt more like an observer than a participant. I wasn’t fully present.

This isn’t a headspace that I particularly enjoy. It is one where I don’t feel fully engaged in the world. I feel like a visitor in a foreign land, a stranger that vaguely understands my surroundings. I have to work to stay focused on a conversation because my thinking is too loud but not terribly interesting. I feel somewhat disengaged, not just from others but from myself.

Thankfully, the feeling is gone this morning. I don’t like to spend too much time ‘there’. It’s like the world outside my head is a movie that I must watch, but don’t really want to. Reading this now I feel like this should be titled head-case rather than headspace and wonder if someone reading this will recommend psychotherapy… but I also suspect that others will fully understand this experience. Is it really just me, or do others have these moments too?

I imagine for some people this can feel scary. For others, comfortable. For some they can put themselves here, for others they can’t leave. For me it is infrequent, it is not something I can talk my way out of, and it seldom lasts more than a day. It’s just a headspace that I sometimes get into… a mode of observing my own participation in the world around me, yet not feeling present.

Cold shower

Unexpected snow has delayed my Daily-Ink today… Shovelling the driveway is taking priority and I’ll get this out tonight. But this is connected to the idea of the post, because I really bundle up just to do something like clearing that white, fluffy, frigid stuff off of my driveway.

Cold showers:

I hate the cold. Can’t stand feeling a chill. I blame it on being born in the Caribbean. In Barbados as a kid, when I was at the beach and it started to rain, tourists would get into the water, since they are getting wet anyway. I’d get out of the water because without the sun shining, the water was too cold for me.

Recently I’ve been turning the hot water off at the end of my showers. I let the water hit the top of my head and wait for it to go cold. Then I move so the water hits my chest and I turn in a circle, getting the water first to hit my core, then down my arms and legs.

By my first turn, my breath is taken away. I actually feel like it’s hard to breathe. I only do this for about 15 seconds but it feels longer. Even after I turn the water off my breathing is shallow and takes a moment to recover.

Then two things happen, first, I feel a tingling sensation and I feel wide awake. This feeling is better than my first coffee! Next, I open my shower curtain and grab my towel. Usually when I do this I feel an uncomfortable chill, but instead the air feels comfortable. So rather than getting a chill from the contrast of hot water to cold air, I feel comfortable.

Fifteen seconds of chilly agony, followed by a huge payoff. I’m going to keep doing this, but I might end up taking slightly longer showers as I convince myself to turn the hot water off.

I’ve got a friend who asks me to join him for a polar bear swim each new year. I’m a step closer, but it might still be a few years before I am willing to take the plunge… if I ever do!

Face-to-face Conferences

While I’m looking forward to our Professional Development Day this coming Friday, I wouldn’t be being honest if I said that I wasn’t missing conferences. I’ll be attending from my laptop, alone in my office. I won’t be going to a large auditorium for a keynote, sitting next to friends, making lunch plans, geeking out in conversations with people I don’t usually get to see, making podcasts between sessions… there is a lot of appeal to engaging with connections beyond the sessions you go to at a conference.

For me, it usually includes meeting ‘digital friends’, people that I know from online/Twitter, whom I’ve never met before face-to-face or whom I have met, but less times than I can count on one hand. These connections invariably make the conference great for me. And not only do I get to meet these wonderful people, they tend to be people that like geeking out with me about what we’ve learned. If I go to a mediocre session, no problem, I can chat with someone who went to a better one. Go to a great session, and now I’ve got someone to share it with out loud, to help me solidify what I’ve learned.

But beyond the learning, there is the human connection. There is the opportunity to be with people I don’t get to see often but I enjoy their company. It’s about being with my tribe. I’ll enjoy the sessions on Friday, but I really look forward to a time in the future when I can once again go to a conference, pick up my swag, and connect with people that make the whole conference experience great!