Author Archives: David Truss

No Reason to Wait

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When I was a kid, I used to collect the caps that you fired in a cap gun. They came in a disk with 8 shots each. When we went to the store, I’d ask for another pack of them, and they were cheap so my mom often bought them for me. The thing is, I never shot them. I was saving them just for the right time.

My grandparents lived across the street from us and I kept the caps and my cap gun at their house. They had a room with an ensuite bathroom that belonged to my great grandfather, and after he passed away, I was the only person who went into those rooms. I kept the caps and gun under the ensuite bathroom sink.

The day before we moved from Barbados to Canada I suddenly remembered that the caps were there and I gathered up my gun and my packets and packets of caps. I took them to my dad and asked him to pack them. “David, we shipped our boxes already, and we can’t take all of those on the plane,” my dad told me. So there I was, with hundreds of caps and a couple hour window to use them.

I shot every one of them off. Eight quick shots in succession, reload, repeat. I can still remember the smell of the fired caps as I recall this years later. I also remember being a bit sad that I had not spread out the use of the caps, that I lost out on many enjoyable opportunities because I was saving them up for the ‘right’ occasion. There was always going to be a better time to use them, until there was almost no time at all.

How often do we do something similar? We are waiting for the right moment. We are metaphorically hoarding an idea, or waiting to find out more before we act, or wanting the conditions to be perfect before we move forward?

James Clear said, “Use the best idea you have right now. Claiming you need to ‘learn more’ or ‘get your ducks in a row’ is just a crutch that prevents you from starting. Education is a lifelong pursuit. You will always need to learn more. It’s not a reason to wait.”

Shoot off a few caps, don’t wait.

Uncivility

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The statements that I wholeheartedly disagreed with almost everything Charlie Kirk stood for, AND that I am deeply saddened and appalled that he was gunned down, murdered, are not contradictory. In fact, put together, these two statements make another statement: They say that violence is not an answer to disagreement in a civil society.

Violence is uncivil.

When societies accept violence as a natural consequence to disagreements, they lose site of what it means to be a free society. They permit further violence as a solution to disagreement. They invite and incite tyranny, control, and loss of freedoms. They go down a path to being less civil, and more dangerous. And they lead to a society more greatly restricted in both rights and freedoms as citizens.

I’ve said before, “We need a society that allows disagreement. We need to be civil about how we protest. Because there is no civil society where violence and damaging property works one-way… only the way upset people think it should. Societies that tolerate inappropriate protest are inviting responses that are less and less civil. And nobody wins.”

Nobody wins, civility is lost, and rationalizations or justifications of any kind promote the worst kind of tolerance… tolerance to violence.

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Related:

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Embracing the cycle

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There have been many years where during the summer my fitness has been on cruise control. I do just enough so that I do not fall too far behind in gains. This summer was different. I pushed hard, stayed very healthy, and even moved in the right direction.

Now I’m back at work, and I’m just going through the motions, doing the bare minimum to check the box that I did a workout. That’s just where I am right now. Normally this would bug the crap out of me, but I’m actually accepting this as part of the cycle. It’s really hard to be pushing for improvements all the time. It’s hard to stay motivated.

Sometimes just showing up is a win. Putting the time in, without giving 100% is still putting the time in. Some days that’s all I’ve got. And the reality is, that’s a lot more than not showing up at all. That’s a lot more than many people do.

It might be a few more days, it might be a week or two, but I’ll get back into a cycle where I push myself. Until then I’ll still get on the treadmill, I’ll still stretch, I’ll still move weights around… and more importantly, I won’t beat myself up for not doing enough.

Constant interruptions

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I was reminded yesterday of the never ending flow of interruptions that a school principal can be faced with. My day went well enough, nothing major happened, and I had some positive interactions with both students and staff. But I was a yo-yo bouncing in and out of my office, feeling like I was always working on a task other than what I wanted to, or planned to, be working on.

At one point I washed my coffee cup to fill it and then ran two errands with an empty cup in my hand, because I was distracted before filling it. At another point I was holding an HDMI cable that I was taking to a teacher and was interrupted a couple times, and even went back to my office holding the cable, before finally taking it to its intended place.

And this is often the norm. Being pulled one way when trying to go another. Starting a task and finding it undone an hour later. Creating a quick ‘To Do’ list, only to make it a ‘To Do Tomorrow’ list.

At one point I was asked a policy question regarding funding for an online course. I was pretty sure our system was trying to charge a student for a course I thought they should get for free. I went to the OneNote where I keep my links to the BC government policies. I got several 404 errors on the website. This even happened to my 2025-26 policy link I added in April. It seems the Ministry has made updates again and changed the main links.

I searched the website for the specific reference. Couldn’t find it. I asked Copilot to look for me. Copilot agreed with me, but didn’t provide links to the actual policy for this specific situation. I asked my online principal’s group chat, and this usually very responsive chat stayed silent for an hour and 40 minutes. Then I got an answer agreeing with me with a comment that this principal also couldn’t find the answer when she asked previously, and had to get a response from the Ministry via email.

What should have been a simple question took me almost 2 hours to answer. And I can’t even count the amount of other things I did in that time, including a 45+ minute meeting and a 10 minute phone call to a parent that I played text tag with trying to find a good time that we could both chat.

Yesterday was a good reminder of the constant interruptions, redirections, and multitasking expectations of a principal. Sure there are those moments that are efficient and effective, but for large parts of any given day, with countless ‘other duties as assigned’ tossed unexpectedly onto my ‘To Do’ list, or rather the ‘Gotta do this first’ list… most of the time the interruptions are the job.

Somewhere in between

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There is somewhere in between hard science and woo-woo science where consciousness sits. There is a space between evidence we can see and unknown connections that are not yet explainable, but will be one day.

We talk about coincidences, synchronicity, and even dumb luck to try to understand relationships between unlikely events. We’ve all heard stories of people ‘just knowing’ things they shouldn’t know, or being aware when something happens to a loved one far away. It happens. It’s unexplainable.

Some people will profess that it’s divine intervention, others will talk about energy fields, still others will proclaim psychic powers. There are as many theories as there are experiences that promote them.

I think that consciousness is inherently connected. I think that we don’t yet understand how? We can’t understand how to either harness or observe the connections, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Without a radio, I can’t prove to you that there is music being transmitted on multiple frequencies around you right now. Without sensors, I can’t prove to you that the sun hits you with ultraviolet light.

We don’t have consciousness sensors yet. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t being bombarded by waves of consciousness all the time. Maybe the holy men of the past were just tuned into a frequency that we aren’t able to see or hear. Maybe intuition is a kind of a weak consciousness radio receiver?

Somewhere between current science and wacky woo-woo wanna-be science there sits a currently unknown and undiscovered understanding of consciousness. We see glimpses of of it, but don’t have the knowledge to explain it.

Rich conversations

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It’s amazing how good conversations with people you love and care about can help you through a day. It reinforces that we are social beings and that we require connections to sustain us.

I am someone who appreciates my alone time. I like solitude, and I’m much more of an introvert than people might think I am. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that I value and appreciate time with family and friends. Liking solitude isn’t contradictory to enjoying rich conversations. Being an introvert doesn’t mean that I don’t want to build strong connections to others, I’d just rather not do so in larger social situations. 

I have a friend who can go into any social situation, make connections with people he just met, and have a rich conversation that go well beyond discussing the weather, occupations, and general family updates. He can find common ground and start to instantly develop rapport and develop a relationship with people he barely knows in minutes. That’s not me. In a large setting, I’d rather find one person I’m comfortable with, maybe two people, and have a more intimate conversation rather than sharing things in a group. Both approaches are valid, they are just different. Both are about the same thing, which is making and maintaining connections to others.

At one point I used to have these kind of rich conversations on Twitter. I found like-minded people who I’d connect with and then we’d slide into direct messages and get to know each other. I’d go to conferences and connect to people I had never met face-to-face, and I’d feel like I already knew them. I no longer do that with social media. Now I use social media to connect to people in my life already, as a means to add one more layer of connection. My daughters get sent different things than my wife, which is different from what I share with my best friend, which is different from what I share with my uncle, and again different from things I share with my mom and sisters. In each case adding another avenue to build connections I already have. 

Then there are text messages, phone calls, FaceTime, and even Zoom. In each case I’m building up a connection to keep the conversation going with people I care about. I’m looking to develop richer connections, richer conversations… essential to maintaining my wellbeing and my bonds that sustain me when I can’t always see people in person.  

 

 

Goodish

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I was texting to a friend and asked how things were going. His response, ‘Goodish’. This word hit a chord with me. I get it. It’s a sentiment more than descriptor. It’s less than ‘but’, as in ‘I’m good but…’, and yet more than saying satisfactory.

Health is good, a few aches, yet doing well. Family is well too. Work is just fine. Me? Oh, I’m ‘Goodish’.

Not Ready, and Ready

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I’m not ready to connect AI to my email, to have it view my calendar, to let it automate my communication, or write for me unsupervised. I’m not trusting AI to organize my life in any way.

But…

I am ready to share all my health data. I’m ready for AI to know everything about my health that I can provide it. I want to get a DEXA scan and share it with Chat GPT or some other tool for feedback.

Analyze and diagnose me, but don’t run my life.

That’s my current line… let’s see how it changes in a year.

Time perspective

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The older you get, the faster time flies. I don’t think it’s anything magical, it’s simply perspective. To a 10 year old, 5 years is half of a life. To a 60 year old, 5 years is 1/12th of a life. To a kid waiting for dessert, 5 minutes feels like forever. An adult is practiced at waiting and doesn’t mind a break before dessert.

Yet, even though I know it’s just perspective, I can’t help but be amazed at how quickly time flies by. It’s like I’m on a merry-go-round that is speeding up by tiny increments… completely unnoticeable at any given moment, but clearly obvious when seen over longer periods of time.

It’s a reminder to appreciate the current moment even more, because the next moment goes by more quickly. Appreciate the now, it’s gone soon enough, and it’s being replaced by ever shorter moments later.

Cross pollination

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Do you know what’s really hard to do? First, choose an area of your life where you really have your ‘stuff’ together. Then take those same skills, habits, and discipline and apply it to another part of your life. It should be easy, or at least easier than it is. We should be able to recognize what makes us extremely effective in one aspect of our lives and simply apply the same strategies elsewhere.

What prevents this? Is it motivation? Is it the fear of starting? Is it that we recognize the effort is more than we are willing to put out?

Whatever the reason, it’s sometimes important to remember that it is easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than it is to think your way into a new way of acting. Start with the action. Do the things you already do elsewhere in a new area of your life. Start with small actions, but the action itself is the start. Not the thinking, not the planning, not the talking about it… the doing.

Apply action, and the good work and skills you’ve developed will indeed cross over.