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.
That’s a term you’ve probably heard at some point in your life. But more than likely it means, ‘your priorities don’t match mine.’ The thing is, it’s hard for people to all have the same priorities at the same time. Sure sports team members all want to win a game, but a player in a defensive position moving too far forward trying to score could jeopardize giving up a goal.
Even when the goal is the same people in different roles need to have different priorities. It’s easy to project your priorities on other people, much harder to recognize other’s priorities when they don’t match yours. Even when the motivations are the same priorities can be different. At this point, what’s more important, the priorities or the motivation? I think more often than not people look at what they think others prioritize and lose track of what the motivation is for their actions, and that creates unnecessary conflict.
Since dipping into the Halloween candy a bit too early, I really haven’t eaten well. It’s like my body got used to the sugar buzz and now I feel the craving for sweeter, less healthy food. It’s interesting how our gut biome can influence our minds. Through the enteric nervous system, our gut sends messages to our brain. ‘More sugar’ seems to be the message my brain has been getting recently, and I’ve been complacently acquiescing.
It’s time for me to take control again. To plan my meals better and to avoid unnecessary sugar. That doesn’t mean that I have to go on some strict diet, it just means I should eat intentionally, rather than listening to my sugar-craving gut. 
I’ve already shared that I’m playing with geometry a lot with Joe Truss. We met on Zoom today and talked about living in a ‘Tetraverse’, a universe that is built on the structure of a tetrahedron.
Today we spoke about how this Tetraverse would (and does) affect gravity and wheels spinning on axis. Then I went back to my magnetic ball and rod 8-frequency tetrahedron that I built a few weeks back and played some more. It’s late and I’m not going to try to do a synopsis of the intricate patterns I saw. What I do want to say is that it’s fun to play in a space where I am constantly learning both by being taught and by discovery.
Well, it’s time to start wearing my long underwear again. The temperature has dropped dramatically and the cold damp rain is seeping into me. I have learned over the years that when the days start getting shorter and I’m both heading to work and leaving from work in the dark, it’s time to layer up my clothing.
Vancouver is a damp kind of cold and it seems to chill me more than the crisp cold of Toronto, although I hated Toronto winters far more than Vancouver ones. Toronto winters sucked the life out of me. Here in Vancouver I am still not a fan of winter but the temperature doesn’t drop as low, even if the kind of chill is different.
Layers and Vitamin D, these are my two remedies for winter. And since I take Vitamin D all year round it’s just the long underwear and extra layers that are the big adjustment this time of year.
For those of you that are not fans of winter, what helps you through?
Isn’t it strange how we take the people around us for granted sometimes? It’s not intentional or hurtful. It’s not that we are taking advantage of them. We simply don’t recognize how the people around us support us, lift us up, nurture us, look out for us, and most importantly care for us. They are just there, doing what they do as a part of our work or family, and they make us better, make our jobs easier, and show kindness when we need it.
Remember to show your appreciation once in a while. Not because they went out of their way to support you… rather, just for consistently being there.
When my youngest daughter gets stressed about something I will often start to sing ‘Let It Go’ from the movie Frozen. I’m an awful singer and she’ll roll her eyes at me. Sometimes she even beats me to the punchline, “…And don’t start singing Let It Go… please.”
If it’s a serious topic, I won’t start to sing, but when she is perseverating on a small issue, I let it rip, nice and loud, “Let it go, let it go!” Just that verse, I honestly don’t know the song that well and have always struggled remembering music lyrics.
What’s interesting though is that it’s always easy to give advice like that to others, but not so easy to feed the same advice to yourself.
There is the saying, ‘Death by a thousand paper cuts’ to suggest no one wound that is fatal but rather the accumulation of many wounds that finally leads to your demise. Sometimes stresses and challenges are like that. No one stressor is too big to handle, but not being able to let go of a thousand little stressors feels overwhelming. Or, life just gets busy with many many stressors then one or two slightly bigger stressors get added and it all seems too much. Just those couple issues on their own would be fine, but they add to an accumulation of things you didn’t let go of and suddenly these slightly bigger items seem gigantic.
It’s not easy to let even little things go when they are sitting on your brain. And sometimes you can’t let go of the problem or challenge, you actually have to face it… and that’s the thing that stresses you out. But the time and energy you spend worrying really doesn’t help. So be it a song, exercise, a quote, or even meditation, the trick is not to let the stressors live in your brain rent free. Stress as you deal with them or ‘let it go’ until you can deal with them. Just don’t think avoiding them altogether works. You aren’t actually letting them go, you’re just not letting them accumulate and consume your thinking when you aren’t dealing with them.
And if this was easy, there would be no reason to get this song stuck in your head.
I went to the dentist after work yesterday and got a couple small fillings. Two weird things about me and the dentist. First, I often fall asleep on the chair. With my mouth numb, I don’t feel anything, so I relax and I nod off. I work up on the chair twice snort/snoring yesterday because my breathing was a bit off with my mouth wide open.
Secondly, the numbing injection stays with me a long time. My appointment was at 5pm and my cheek and chin were still numb at 9:30. As annoying as this is, aren’t we lucky to have dentists. Imagine what it was like to have a painful bad tooth a couple hundred years ago and your only options were to pull the tooth out or suffer.
My fillings were not needed because I was in pain, but rather my dentist was preventing my teeth from getting to that point. I didn’t have to wait for the hole to reach my root and cause me agony before trying to fix it. Many people equate going to the dentist with pain. For me a trip to the dentist often involves a nap and the comfort in knowing that I would probably have experienced a lot more future pain had I not gone for my cleanings/regular checkups and taken care of my teach before they caused too much grief. Think about that the next time you are in the dentist’s chair.
Halloween isn’t just for kids. Sure they get most of the candy and attention, but a lot of grown-ups wear costumes for work and for parties… and while some complain, many get right into it. Doesn’t matter if you’re a pirate, a ghoul, a celebrity, a superhero, or a favourite movie character, the makeup, costume, and accessories are donned with excitement, and even pride.
It’s not just a costume, it’s a chance to play make believe like when you were a kid. No, you aren’t fully immersing yourself in your character, but you are reminding yourself of that time in your life. You are getting a little piece of your childhood back.
And it’s fun (if you let it be fun). So if you didn’t have fun with it this year, that’s on you. Next year put a little more into it. Let yourself enjoy the youthful playfulness of dressing up. Play make believe for a night and escape back into your inner child for just a few hours. For a little extra fun, make your own costume rather than buying one. Add some creativity to your play.
For the past few years our high school Principals and Vice Principals have run a fun Halloween costume contest. It often includes elaborate photos and even skits. The theme this year was TV shows/sitcoms from the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s. I have two other principals in my building and one of them suggested we get together to compete. The Carol Burnette Show was selected and we dressed up for a Momma’s Family skit about playing the board game ‘Sorry’.
We decided to lip sync a part of the skit. I set up two cameras, and with the help of a teacher at lunch on Friday, we ran through the skit twice (a bit more than that with a false start the second time. It took less than 30 minutes from set up to finish.
Saturday morning I spent just over 2 hours editing and here is the result:
It’s fun putting together something like this. I watched it later and had a few more ideas to add, but rather than spending way too much time making minuscule adjustments, I ended up deciding that it’s good enough. It was fun and it’s done.
Happy Halloween everyone. Enjoy the spirit of dressing up and having fun with it.
I’m already not a fan of the news. My wife will often watch the 6pm news and I usually put headphones on and listen to something else. A few days ago I was cutting some vegetables and the news was on in the background, and after 5 depressing reports one after another I had to stop listening.
Yesterday and today I had a number of news items cross my social media feed. One was a tragic incident in Korea where people were crushed and trampled. This is actual news, and, like above, very depressing. But a few other items were about news being faked or misinformation sharing.
Here is an example: A viral video of a politician being stopped by chanting audience members who were doing a derogatory chant… except in the actual footage the crowd is happily chanting the politician’s name. The fake version is the one going viral, and even making it onto supposed ‘news’ websites.
It’s bad enough that news is so negative to begin with, but it’s hard to weed out what’s real and what’s fake. It’s getting much harder to recognize the difference. And it’s getting even more important to be able to discern the difference. Do most people even try? Or do they just choose their news sources and narratives they want to follow and follow them blindly?
When I read any sensational headlines these days my first instinct isn’t to be shocked or enraged, my instinct is to question: Is this real? What’s the bias? Where should I look to fact check or validate this?
The news used to answer the questions who, what, where, when, how, and why… now it’s me that questions the news.
