Author Archives: David Truss

Binge watching

Every extended break I end up doing this: I pick a series and binge watch a few seasons over a few days. I watch so little television of any kind regularly, that there is always something to catch up on. My wife totally sunk into The Handmaids Tale a while back and told me I’d love it. So here I am approaching the end of Season 2, her watching it again with me, and saying ‘One more’ after already watching two episodes in a sitting.

Margaret Atwood is a brilliant writer, and the series is very well done. I remember seeing her say in a video that she didn’t put anything into Handmaid’s Tale that wasn’t something that had already happened somewhere in the world. If I was watching this series in 2019, I would have thought less about this fact, but somehow 2020 has made me see the world quite differently.

Today I’m more keenly aware that fascism can rear its ugly head. I’m more keenly aware of how religious beliefs can be argued and leveraged to reduce non-believer’s choices. I am more keenly aware of how information can be misconstrued and manipulated to fool a large percentage of the population.

We live in a world where rulers can still rule for their lifetime; Where religious and cultural genocide happen; Where rights to basic food and healthcare are dependent on geography and luck of being born to parents who can support a child’s needs. This is a not a just and free world for many, and that can lead to unrest. It can lead to upheaval, and it can spark less democratic and more totalitarian regimes. Regimes that, while not necessarily similar to Handmaids Tale, can be quite scary.

On that solemn and dark thought… my wife wants to watch another episode, and I’m quite willing to partake.

Habit tracking – what’s next?

I’ve been reevaluating my healthy living goals over this holiday break. I’ve realized that I don’t need to track a few things that I was tracking on my healthy living chart.

The yellow sticker was originally for 20 minutes minimum reading (listening to books, not podcasts), and/or writing, which I didn’t do much of until the middle of 2019, when I started writing here daily. I don’t think I’ve missed a day of writing since, and I listed to 33 books this year. So, mission accomplished… and such a regular part of my day now that I really don’t need a sticker to track this behaviour.

Also, I started tracking intermittent fasting in 2019, and continued this year. I needed at least a 14 hour gap to earn a sticker. My original goal was 5 days a week with breaks on Friday and Saturday nights when I might have snacks or drinks after dinner. I think this is really healthy but I’ve been pushing myself on my morning workouts and actually struggling to keep weight on, after years of having too much weight on me. I am now my university weight and fitter than I’ve been in about 25 years. But I struggled once we hit September to go 14 hours on most days, and while I’d get close, tracking it seems moot, because I often felt self care was not the objective of holding off on getting some food in me and feeling strong.

My other stickers are exercise and meditation. I usually worked out 5 days a week, and I know that many weeks this year, when I missed 2 workouts early on, the lack of stickers that week really motivated me to exercise daily and keep going. So this sticker reward and tracking is really working for me.

For meditation, I have been doing 10 min. guided daily, and almost have a perfect record. There are some days when I would take too long writing and do a rushed workout and forget to meditate later, having skipped my morning routine. On this break, where I’m not getting up between 5 and 5:30am, I’ve remembered to meditate after 11pm on 3 different days. I think next year I’m going to try to meditate twice daily, once guided in the morning and once silently later in the day (at least 4 days a week). Then I’ll give myself a sticker for each, so I can contrast the amount of times I meditated twice, while also tracking if I skip both on a given day.

So where am I right now with my 2021 healthy living motivation chart?

Red: Workouts (continued)

Blue: Meditation (1 or 2 stickers)

Yellow: A writing goal that I haven’t figured out yet?

Green: I don’t know yet?

Starting this chart 2 years ago has been significant in me being able to create a healthy lifestyle that I’ve been able to monitor and maintain. It’s not a light choice to make, it’s a year of dedication with significant rewards to my personal health and mental well-being. So, over the next few days, I’ll have to solidify my last two targets… and there you have it, writing this has given me something new to track… archery. Now I just need to make my writing and archery goals specific and I’ll be all set for the new year!

Body and mind

Background:

I’m loving my return to archery. I now realize that when I readjust my healthy living goals for 2021, they will need to include finding time to shoot arrows. Just like I created time for writing and exercise over the past couple years, I need to carve out some regular time to shoot. Over this week the first thing I’ll do is figure out a way to do so indoors at home… that’s not just safe, but safe in my wife’s eyes.

These last couple of sessions, I’ve been working on my release. With a compound bow, the goal is not to squeeze the trigger with your thumb, but rather to pull your entire arm back and have the back tension of your arm and hand cause your thumb to trigger the release. To do this, your hand needs to be relaxed, your thumb needs to be securely around the trigger, and your back tension should cause the release such that the release surprises you. Being comfortable with this surprise takes getting used to, and so does the idea of not squeezing your thumb.

Body:

It’s interesting when you learn a new skill how easy it is to fill your conscious mind with everything except what you need to focus on. I want to be surprised by the trigger release, but my body is waiting, anticipating it, and taking my attention away from my focus on my release. I want to relax my sight, and let the scope pin float around the target center, but my thumb bounces on the trigger when I see the pin dead center. I want to feel my arm pulling back but instead I realize that my thumb pushed down… only after I’ve taken the shot.

With any new physical skill, I find that my body awareness is my biggest challenge. In the past, when I’ve gone to a core fitness class, the Physio guiding us would adjust my body during an exercise and say, ‘Do you feel the difference?’ Usually my response is ‘No’. I need to look at a mirror and practice the difference, but I don’t feel it.

And Mind:

With archery, I’m starting to feel the difference… but I have to be both focussed and relaxed: Focussed enough to be paying attention to as little as possible, honing in on just my release and not anything else that distracts me; Relaxed enough that I am genuinely surprised by the release, and not in a heightened state of preparation for it. The state of being simultaneously focussed and relaxed is not easily attained.

It’s about unifying body and mind. Having both act as one.

Holiday greetings

My parents were Jewish in background, but not really in faith. They decided when we were young that we would celebrate Christmas ‘like the other kids’, and so we always had Christmas trees and gifts from Santa. We had so many gifts from our grandparents, aunts, and uncles that it was embarrassing to have friends over to see half a tree above a massive pile of gifts.

My grandfather called our tree the Hanukkah bush. We would have turkey and a ham, and my dad would tell the same joke every year about the pig being circumcised, so the ham was kosher. So, (totally tongue-in-cheek) Christmas was about consumerism and blasphemy in our household.

But above and beyond that, it has always been about the spirit of giving and spending time with family. It’s about love and memories. It’s about being grateful and feeling blessed.

No matter if you celebrate Christmas or not, whether it’s a religious holiday for you or not, or whether you celebrate a different holiday around this originally pagan mid-winter holiday… season’s greetings and happy holidays. May the holiday season bring you joy, and may you find hope and promise in the year ahead.

Be well, be strong, and be kind.

A 30 year tradition

It was either Christmas Eve 1989 or 1990 and I was home from universtiy for the holidays. My friend Ross and I had yet to do any Christmas shopping. We drove to a huge mall with a restaurant, ordered lunch and had a few beers, then started shopping. At first we shopped together, but that wasn’t working so we split up. This was the pre-cellphone era so we made plans to meet in an hour. At that point we talked a bit about our purchases, gave each other ideas, and planned a second meeting.

I don’t remember if we split up again or just stuck together after that, but we ended up back at the restaurant, ordered coffees, and then started being brutally honest with each other about how good (and bad) we thought our purchases were for our family members. This resulted in a return or two, and some more purchases, before eating again and heading home.

By 1993 I was living in Vancouver and the commute to Toronto was a bit too far to make Christmas Eve plans with Ross. I have spent a few Christmases ‘back home’ and sure enough we still kept the tradition going, but we’ve celebrated this day many more times at a distance. So, every Christmas Eve morning I get a call from Ross. Every Christmas Eve for 30 years. And hopefully for 30 more.

Jeff Hopkins on the Pacific School of Inquiry and Innovation

Last night I saw this tweet by Jeff Hopkins promoting a new vlog/podcast series ‘School of Thought Victoria‘. Perfect timing since I just finished my most recent audio book and ended up in long drives today. So, I’ve already devoured 3 of the four videos already (I listened, I did not watch,  which is all you need to do since it is a discussion).

So much of what Jeff has shared with Alex Van Tol about the Pacific School of Inquiry and Innovation resonates with me, and what we are working on, and towards, at Inquiry Hub Secondary School. In this series, Jeff is outlining 20 convictions that the school is modeled on. I am looking forward to every one of these conversations.

Here’s what I’ve listened to so far,

Agency:

Inquiry Process:

Learner vs Student:

Subscribe to the channel, and listen to Jeff’s wisdom.

Back to archery and a focus on process

Yesterday I took a hacksaw to the combination lock on my compound bow case. It has been about a year-and-a-half since I shot any arrows with this bow. I did shoot some arrows one afternoon this summer, but that was with a recurve bow, for 45 minutes. Other than that, I basically shelved my new hobby for way too long… obviously to the point that I couldn’t even remember the combination to the case lock.

Today I was lucky enough to be able to shoot a few arrows, and get some (safe and socially distanced) coaching. I was expecting to be rusty, and to have bad form, but I shot surprisingly well. Then I got some key coaching around my thumb release that helped me shoot the most consistent I’ve ever shot!

Reflecting on how well things went, I think that I am fortunate to have a few things going for me. First, I’m still fairly new, so I don’t have years of ingrained bad habits. Second, I had some decent coaching early on, and my bow hand and anchor (where I place my draw hand against my face) are things that came back to me really easily. Third, I’ve kept myself really fit, and having recently recovered from an shoulder injury, a few of the exercises were also excellent for improving my archery strength as well. And finally, I had excellent coaching!

I started archery in the summer 2016. I was recovering from 6 months of chronic fatigue, and realized that if I didn’t start this hobby I’ve wanted to start at this time of renewal, I never would. Then in 2019 I made an intentional decision not to spend time on archery when I rededicated myself to being healthy, but realized to make certain commitments, I also had to make some sacrifices. Now, as 2020 comes to a close, I’ve decided that archery is something I really enjoy and want to get back into.

My favourite part of archery is that it is all about process. Yes, I want to shoot well, and yes the ‘end result’ of where the arrow lands is important. However, once I’ve released the arrow, there is nothing I can do to change that shot. If it isn’t as good as I had hoped, I have a choice of letting it affect my next shot, or I can focus on the process and shooting ‘fresh’ and probably better the next time. It is a mental game that forces me to to ‘let go’ of results and focus on being present. It is a form of meditation, of being in the moment. And for someone who tends to be ‘in my head’ a lot, archery doesn’t allow me to escape from ‘the now’.

I’m excited about returning to this fun hobby, and I’m sure that I’ll have more lessons to learn from, and reflect on, in the coming months.

The sound of snow falling

I love the lack of sound sometimes when it snows. The sound of an absence of sound is what I’m trying to describe. There is a kind of muffled silence that is produced by snow silently landing around you, while all surfaces are covered by puffy snowflakes.

It’s empty, but not like a void.

It’s silent, but somehow not noiseless.

It’s solitude without loneliness.

It’s the sound of snow falling, but there is no sound.

Image by Sheila Stewart

Trade offs

I don’t know too many people that have truly found balance in their lives. Time always seems to be in short supply, and there has always been more to do. Sometimes we need to make trade-offs, we need to prioritize what we really want to do, and be willing to give up on other things we don’t value as much.

I’m now approaching 2 years of keeping track of my fitness, reading and writing, meditation, and intermittent fasting tracking. It was another great year of meeting my healthy living goals… but it didn’t come without trade offs.

I got into archery a few years ago, but I haven’t shot an arrow in a year and a half, other than one visit to a friend up north, and we shot recurve, rather than my compound bow. I am pulling my bow out in a couple days, and while I’m excited to shoot again, I don’t have set plans to keep shooting after the holidays, because I’m not sure I can fit regular archery time into my schedule.

I have barely written on my Pair-A-Dimes blog, and did not start podcasting regularly as I hoped I would. But I’ve written here on my Daily-Ink every day since July, 2019. I’m wondering if I can give up some weekend time to podcast, because I really enjoy the learning conversations that I have.

Over the coming days, I’m going to reevaluate my healthy living goals and do another year-end reflection. However, I find myself wanting to add new goals and not take any old goals away. I find myself wanting to do more rather than making trade offs: Keeping all my previous goals AND write more, AND podcast, AND do archery, AND…

The reality is that I can’t do it all. There needs to be trade offs, there needs to be sacrifices, or my goals will be nothing more than wishful thinking… And I’ve made too much progress in reaching my goals the past two years to undermine the next year with too much on my plate.

The not-so-handyman curse

I have this curse on me. It goes like this: Whenever I do a repair job, I will never go to the hardware store just once. More often than not, it’s three times per job.

Last weekend I replaced the insides of one of my toilets. Hardware store visit 1: buy the replacement items. Visit 2: a pair of pliers large enough to remove a large, seized nut and pick up a replacement flexible water hose that I should have bought in the first place. Visit 3: replace the flexible water hose with the same length hose but a wider screw nut… I thought it was a universal size, it wasn’t and I lost the 50/50 chance of picking the right size the first time.

Today it was replacing the silicone seal around the kitchen sink. I asked the guy at the store what I needed, and he recommended the best sealant to get. After doing all the prep I decided to look up how to get the best bead on my silicone line on YouTube. The last time I did this years ago, it was messy. Three videos later, the secret was obvious: use non-ammonia glass cleaner after putting the bead down, then the excess silicone won’t stick to my finger or smear on the counter or tiles. So, back to the store a second time to get the glass cleaner. I almost count this second visit as a win, since it was only two visits and not three.

I remember replacing a faucet not too long ago. I was so proud of myself for only needing one visit to the store, but once I started the water up, it constantly leaked. I purchased a faulty faucet. Back to the hardware shop I went and had to repeat the entire replacement a second time.

Cursed.

I am not a handyman. I know that attitude sucks. I know I should believe in myself. But I believe in the curse.., and the curse has got me. If anyone knows any voodoo to reverse the curse, I’m open to trying it.