Author Archives: David Truss

It’s not cold, it’s honest

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I have a strong childhood memory of my Grandfather – Papa B. – Leon Bernstein. I’ve previously shared how to me and many others he was a ‘giant’! He quietly helped hundreds of people, he was one of the kindest people I’ve ever known, and he was a people’s person… It didn’t matter if they were a gardener or a doctor, a grocery store clerk or a Prime Minister, Papa B. was someone who treated everyone with honour and respect, and everyone saw this in him.

One day a person in the community died and I was there when Granny B. told Papa about the person dying. My grandfather’s response surprised us both. Imagine a grey haired Polish Jew speaking with a West Indian accent saying, “Oh shite, bu(t) he was a real jack-ass!”

Granny retorted, “Leon, you can’t talk about a dead man like that, it’s rude.”

My grandfather responded, “What? If he was a jackass in life, you think he gonna be any different in death?”

At the time, this totally stunned me. I had always seen my grandfather as a person who only saw the good in people, I don’t think I ever heard him speak ill of anyone before this, it just wasn’t his nature. Now, older and maybe wiser, I understand this a little better.

When you spend your life seeking the good in people and doing good for them, you learn that not all people are the same way. You see the self-centred, the selfish, the assholes, and the jackasses, and you realize they don’t deserve the kindness you give others.

It’s not rude, it’s good calibration. I didn’t know the person who died, but if my grandfather called him a jackass, I’m glad I never met the man. The reality is that such a statement isn’t cold or rude, it’s just honest.

Some people carry with them anger, hate, selfishness, and/or a mean streak that creates more distress than calm, more hurt than joy. And quite frankly in death they deserve to be identified for the character they were in life.

No need to spend time harbouring their ill intent, just acknowledge that they are gone, and continue on as you were before you heard the news. There are so many good people in the world that deserve attention while they are still alive, spend time appreciating and respecting them. Leave the dead jackasses behind and move on.

Routine Ownership

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I heard this quote by Alex Hormozi from Chris Williamson’s Modern Wisdom podcast:

“…if you cannot function without your routine, your routine owns you, you do not own it. Full stop.”

At first this hit me hard. I’m so committed to my routines that I thought he was talking directly to me… a metaphorical gut punch of insight that I needed to hear. That was my first instinct. Now I see it differently.

Basically this is true if you are obsessed with your routine, but otherwise it’s healthy. Only if your routine is costing you your wellbeing or your relationships with others would I agree that a routine owning you is an issue. Beyond the routine costing you in a very unhealthy way, you need the routine to pull you, to ‘own’ you in a way, or it wouldn’t be a routine.

We have some routines that are non-negotiable commitments. For example, if you have kids, you need to feed them. You don’t break the routine and not feed them dinner. But if the routine (or habit) is something negotiable, like meditation, or working out, or a minimum number of steps in a day, for example… Then there are always reasons to break the routine, or break the streak. If you don’t let the routine own you, it will quickly not become routine.

The routine needs to own you or it will no longer be something you regularly do. It’s that simple. If I’m headed to bed, exhausted, and I haven’t written my daily blog post, it’s easy to say, ‘I’ll just skip today.” But then it’s easier and easier to have other ‘acceptable’ excuses… And I would not have recently achieved 7 years of daily blogging. It’s not that I can’t function otherwise, it’s not an issue that the routine owns me more than I own it. In fact, this is precisely what is needed to ensure the routine continues.

I’ll end where I started just two days ago when I said about ‘Streaks and hard things’:

1. Our streaks are part of our identity. They don’t define us, we are defined by the act of keeping them.

2. Do hard things. The effort is its own reward. I don’t know anyone with a hard-to-keep streak who isn’t also doing well in other aspects of their lives, and ‘crushing it’… A life with intentional hard things begets a life where challenges are met and overcome rather than seen as barriers and limitations. 

There might be a reason to stop in the future… but until then the streak will keep streaking.

And the routines will keep routining… but they’ve got to own you a bit for this to happen.

Old Withhold

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I’m cleaning out the bathroom cupboards. As I type this, I’m sitting on the bathroom floor looking at a small blue Cooper bag. It says ‘Barbados’ on the zipper end sides, underneath the ‘Cooper’ name and logo. It’s a miniature of a duffle bag and for decades it was my travel toiletry bag when I went on trips. I got it while living in Barbados and it is over 50 years old now. I haven’t used it in almost a decade and while it has held up fairly well, it is old and looks dirty. It’s time to throw it out.

My two eldest sisters, also born in Barbados, both had one as well. Mine was blue, theirs were red and green. I’m not sure they lasted 5 years for them, much less 50. Cooper was not the name brand anyone identified with back then. I think those were Adidas, Nike, and Puma, in that order, and maybe Fila as a close 4th. But I was not someone who bought into the trends… because I was nerdy, not cool, and I liked my little Cooper bag.

I can’t share a specific memory of using it, I just know that it has been a trusted travel companion for most of my life and I find it hard to let it go. The garbage bag is waiting, I’m hesitating. It logically makes no sense to keep it. I’ll never use it again. I won’t. And yet it’s so hard to say a final goodbye.

How many things do we hoard, that we cherish in a way that makes us want to hold on to it, to withhold it from a beckoning garbage dump? Not because it doesn’t belong there, on the contrary, we know that’s where it belongs. But this item, whatever it may be, is a piece of our past, a relic that ties us to our memories, a keepsake to remind us of who we knew, what we did, and ultimately who we are.

Some items will stay as long as we have room, but today I say goodbye to my Cooper bag. It doesn’t have a nostalgic hold on me anymore. 50 years is long enough. A final farewell and into the garbage bag it goes, never to be seen again.

Streaks and hard things

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I read Chris Kennedy’s post this morning, ‘Still Running – A Long Read’. It might be long, but for anyone who uses streaks to make a commitment, it’s a great read.

This is my comment. I think each of the points will eventually be a post on their own, but for today, I’ll leave them as I wrote them:

Two thoughts come to mind.

1. Our streaks are part of our identity. They don’t define us, we are defined by the act of keeping them.

2. Do hard things. The effort is its own reward. I don’t know anyone with a hard-to-keep streak who isn’t also doing well in other aspects of their lives, and ‘crushing it’… A life with intentional hard things begets a life where challenges are met and overcome rather than seen as barriers and limitations. 

There might be a reason to stop in the future… but until then the streak will keep streaking.
💪😄👍

Recipe Alterations

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My absolute favourite salmon recipe, cooked on the barbecue over a soaked cedar plank, comes from a cookbook… Sort of. The recipe calls for a marinade to be made with sun-dried tomatoes and fresh parsley being the main ingredients. And the very interesting thing about this recipe is that the marinade is made the day before, but it isn’t put onto the salmon until you’re just about ready to barbeque it. I follow the marinade instructions but I take a lot of liberties with the ingredients.

First of all I put copious amounts of everything, well above the ‘suggested’ amounts in the recipe: parsley, sun-dried tomatoes, garlic, salt and pepper. I also do equal parts of parsley and cilantro, adding a third main ingredient. When I make this for my sister who doesn’t like cilantro, (coriander), I swap out cilantro with basil for a small batch, but my family and I like the cilantro flavoured version too much to only do basil. My final alteration is that there is also olive oil in the recipe, but I use the oil that comes with the sun-dried tomatoes instead.

I couldn’t give you any more details because I measure nothing. Not a measuring cup or spoon in sight. This is my favourite kind of cooking, taking a recipe and making it my own. Not starting from scratch, altering a recipe to create something better.

I do try to follow a recipe precisely the first time I make it. I like to see why the recipe got into a cookbook on its own merits. But unless it’s sensational the next time I make it, I’m going a bit (or a lot) rogue… and subsequently every time after that too because I almost never measure my alterations with anything other than memory and instinct.

7 years of daily blogging

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Yesterday marked my 7th anniversary of writing a daily blog. I ended the original post that started this streak saying,

“I’m not getting younger and more than ever, NOW is the best time to start.

I tried over a decade ago, now I’m going to do it – a short daily blog.” ~ Daily-Ink, July 6, 2019

It wasn’t quite 10 years earlier, the idea for Daily Ink was actually attempted September 29, 2010. I was living in China and had purchased a leather bound book and decided that I’d write in it, take a picture of what I’d written, and post it on a blog which I changed addresses from datruss.davidtruss(.com) to daily-ink.davidtruss(.com).

In the original ‘first post’ I explained:

“The title ‘Daily Ink’ is inspired by Stephen Downes “Ol Daily” and his “Half an Hour” that he attempts to decticate to writing each day… and to my former student Kris Bradburn whose blog is cleverly named “Wanderng Ink”.

I stopped reading the Ol Daily for a while but Stephen has started sharing it on LinkedIn, and I’m back to reading it again. Also, just a couple days ago Kris’ substack blog arrived in my email. It’s wonderful to see the two original inspirations for my blog title still blogging.

Although it took almost a decade to make it happen, once I committed, I committed. How much longer will I go? I’m honestly not sure. What I do know is that I’m not ready to break the streak. The reward of writing every day exceeds the effort. Like I say in my byline:

“Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.”

And so my Daily-Ink will keep getting inked for a while longer…



 

Unmasking

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We play different roles in the lives of different people: A child, a parent; an employee, an employer; a host, a guest; a friend, a foe. People get different views of you depending on both your relationship and the role you play in their lives. And we act differently in each of these roles. It’s like we have no one defined identity. We wear metaphorical masks that reveal only limited aspects of who we are, depending on the roles we are playing.

Having just retired from a 27 year career, I’m leaving behind a mask that I no longer need to wear. I’m not going to ‘play that role’ anymore. I’ve unmasked from that identity. I thought maybe I would feel a loss, but I feel more like I’ve removed an unneeded layer. It’s reassuring to feel this way, I made the right decision.

On Wednesday my wife organized a wonderful group of family and friends to celebrate my retirement, then I spent a few more days with my sister, my cousin, and his family. It was really special to have this time, around people I love, feeling fully unmasked and completely comfortable.

Today I popped by to visit my predecessors, something we planned last week. I saw someone in his element, ready to thrive. This is even more cathartic. As a leader, I did what I could to leave things as best as I could. The factor I had no control over was succession… that was up to my bosses, not me. To see that the right choice was made and that the conditions for things to improve are in the hands of someone capable, with the right philosophy, and the skills to be awesome, makes it even easier to let go.

I don’t know what new masks I will put on in the future, but it feels fantastic taking this one off. I feel like I wore this mask for just the right amount of time, and deep down I know it is time to remove and ‘retire’ it. I can’t describe how good it feels to know this.

Human Zoochosis

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The first time I remember seeing zoochosis was with a baby elephant. I was at an elephant rescue sanctuary in Thailand, with my wife and daughters for ‘A day with the elephants experience’. We arrived and were waiting to meet our guides. About 20 meters in front of us there was a small elephant with one leg tied with rope to a post in the ground. This baby elephant was sort of marching on the spot. It took one step forward then one back in a rocking motion that almost looked like an Instagram boomeranm – a short video being played forward and backwards over and over again. It was novel at first but five minutes in, it seemed sadly hypnotic and unsettling.

‘Zoochosis is a psychological condition in captive animals characterized by repetitive, often self-destructive behaviours like pacing, swaying, or over-grooming, caused by the stress of captivity. These behaviors are not typically seen in wild animals and indicate significant emotional distress.’ (AI search definition)

Recently I saw a video clip where a woman was questioning if we were not at a point where we are dealing with human zoochosis? I don’t even think I watched the video to the end, I was just doom scrolling as a 30 minute mental break after work, and it was a video that came and went.

A couple days later this hit me as something very relevant. I saw another video of an American in his car. He was talking about doing food delivery as his second job, wife and baby at home, and how just to make ends meet he was working 14 to 18 hours every day. He said he didn’t know how long he could sustain this, and how hard it was to only see his wife and baby late at night before being the first one up to get to his other job. He wasn’t asking for help, he was questioning life, purpose, and meaning behind doing nothing but working just to barely exist. I realized he was describing what it’s like to be a ‘captive animal characterized by repetitive, often self-destructive behaviours’.

Captive in a system not designed for humans. Stuck in a cycle of living to work, not working to live. Trapped in survival mode and unable to think beyond subsistence and making ends meet. No time for joy, no hope, no sense of purpose or meaning. No place for a human to feel like they belong and can thrive.

I’m reminded of a video of a mouse seeking happiness in a world where he is in both a literal and metaphorical ‘rat race’, seeking happiness, which is either short lived, or out of reach. It is a social commentary about this exact issue. How many people are lost in this race to nowhere? Lost in the stress of captivity, knowing that they cannot escape? Animals, trapped and psychologically damaged, without the resources or means to escape human zoochosis.

Summer nights

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I’ve been staying at my cousin’s house, my sister is in town and we’ve had a couple wonderful days together. But more than the days, the evenings have been wonderful.

We’ve been hanging out in a beautiful back yard with comfy chairs and a fireplace. Shooting the breeze, laughing, and enjoying each other’s company.

When it’s warm, and still bright out until 10pm, summer nights hold a special kind of magic… and being with truly amazing people accentuates the experience.

Habit revamp

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Summer is here and I’m don’t have a morning routine anymore. I’m currently between sets at a gym I don’t usually go to, because last night I stayed with a cousin in a nearby city. I’m here 3 hours later than usual, which is perfectly ok, I really don’t need to be out of the house at 5:45 anymore… or anytime in the foreseeable future.

I don’t care about the actual time I work out, or write my daily blog post, or meditate, or take my vitamins, but I do care that I actually do these things very regularly. A perfect example is that today I went directly from cardio to weights and only now realize that I skipped my stretching routine… a key ingredient to keeping my back healthy and ready to do weights.

Basically I had a habitual routine that was rock soiled while I had a work schedule to plan my routine around, and now that’s gone. I’m not going to figure this out today, and new habits take a while to form, but I want to figure out a kind of flexible routine in terms of times of day, location, and summer plans. I don’t actually know how to do this, so it may be messy for a while. Even so, I know me, and if I don’t have systems in place I miss getting things done.

There is a saying that if you want something done, give it to a busy person. That was me for a long time, now that I have more time I really need to create systems that will ensure all the healthy habits I developed are part of my new patter and pace of life.