Author Archives: David Truss

Alien perspective

I think jokes like this are funny:

…because they hold a bit of truth.

We aren’t all that intelligent.

We draw imaginary lines on the globe to separate us. We fight wars in the name of angry Gods that are more concerned with our devotion than for peace and love. We care more about greed than about the environment. We spend more on weapons of destruction than we do on feeding the needy. We judge each other on superficial differences. We have unbelievable intellect, capable of incredible technological advancement, yet we let our monkey brains prevail.

Sure we exhibit some intelligence, we are intelligent viruses.

At least that’s what I think an objective alien visiting our planet would think.

Conversation on an alien ship observing earth:

“Give them another 100 years… if they figure out how to not kill each other and the planet, then let’s introduce ourselves.”

Right now I’m not terribly optimistic about what those aliens will find in our future? ‘Civilized’ humans? A desolate planet? Artificial intelligence treating us like we treat ‘unintelligent’ animals? Or more of the same bickering, posturing, warring, and separatist views of humans trying to usurp dominance over each other?

It would be funny if it wasn’t sad.

Uncertainty and doubt

I had a dream last night. In it someone I care about was asking my why I even bother writing my daily blog? She called it boring and a waste of time. In all honesty, this being said in my dream bugged me more than if the person in my dream actually said it in person. It bothered me because I am the author of my dreams, not the people I see in them.

So essentially I was casting doubt on myself. That’s harsh.

Why bother? Why make the effort? Who do I think I am, that anyone would care to read what I have to say? These are the internal voices of uncertainty and doubt. These are questions that tear me down rather than build me up.

These are the pangs that prevent people from sharing their ideas, their writing, their art, their creative expression, and even their love.

“I’m not good enough.”

“Other people are so much better.”

“I’m not creative enough.”

“I have nothing of value to say.”

It’s easier to silence the naysayers than it is to silence your own inner voice. I can handle all kinds of feedback. I can learn from the harshest of criticism. A perfect example is an angry, yelling coach never upset me, I just took the feedback.

But that inside voice… that nagging self-doubt, that self-uncertainty, that is something I do not always battle well with. It holds me back. It keeps me from speaking up, from stepping up, from confidently sharing my thoughts and opinions.

Why is it that the internal battles we face are so much harder than the outside ones?

What helps me is consistency. It’s developing habits where I can push through the uncertainty and doubt. It’s creating small accomplishments that lead me to successful outcomes. No, I’m not going to be the athlete I was in my 20’s ever again… but I’m fitter now than I ever was in my 30’s and 40’s, and I suffer less back pain than I did in my 20’s. Oh, and no one workout got me where I am today.

In fact it wasn’t the good workouts that got me here, it was the days that I didn’t want to work out, the times I had to talk myself into just going through the motions that made me get to this point. I’m floundering a bit right now with working out, but I still get my butt on my stationary bike or treadmill every day. I still don’t let myself miss 2 days in a row, and rarely let myself miss 3 days in a week.

Some days I might hit the publish button on my blog and think ‘that’s not a great post’. But I still hit the button, I still make the effort. I still read over my work and try to edit it. And I still get mad at myself when I see a typo or wrong word published. The same critic that tries to stop me can also be my friend. It doesn’t just shut me down, it adds an element of high expectations towards all my final work.

And that’s why my dream this morning hurt me a bit. It was my inner voice being a gremlin, trying to find fault with myself, my work, my creativity. Uncertainty and doubt are not usually our friends, they are the bedfellows of procrastination and excuses. They are the enemies of confidence and productivity. And while they may lay dormant for a while, they can creep up on us when we least expect it. Like in our dreams…

But I’m awake now. It’s time to hit the publish button. It’s time to get on the treadmill. There is work to be done and I’ll just tuck the uncertainty and doubt away.

Remembering No Office Day

I forgot all about this until a Facebook Memory came up a few days ago.

“My ‘No Office Day’ Post , (December 11th, 2010) was inspired by a busy schedule whereby I promised my staff I’d see more of them and then promptly got stuck in an almost all-day meeting. The following day, I didn’t bring my laptop to school and spent the entire day in classrooms. I chronicled my day by taking some photos on my phone and uploading them to twitter with the hashtag #noofficeday.”

That quote was taken from my ‘International No Office Day’ post, at the end of August 2011. I feel like I wrote these blog posts a full lifetime ago. It’s kind of neat that this one No Office Day that I had in Dalian, China became an international event. It was fun to read blog posts, news clips, and even watch YouTube videos about other principals spending the full day in classrooms and not their office.

I just dug this up with a Google search. Beyond the Open-Door Policy, and I chuckle at the reporting which stated I had only done ‘scheduled walkthroughs’ for nearly a month. I tried to visit every classroom every day, and said that visit could be a simple walkthrough, but I didn’t have a formal schedule. I also remember this day getting a bit of criticism too, but I don’t remember the specifics.

Still the experience I shared was a wonderful event, and I love looking back at the pictures I took in classrooms. The fact that it became an event and was shared by many others makes me smile. I think some day early next year I might hold another one of these days. I might only do a morning because my one school is so small, I can hit all 4 grades in 4 blocks… and my online school doesn’t have classes I can join.

It will be fun to revive this day and spend a bit more time in classes with kids.

Buh-dub. Buh-dub.

Lying in bed, ear against my pillow. Buh-dub. Buh-dub.

My heart beats in my head. Buh-dub. Buh-dub.

Soothing, calming, an orchestra of internal activity embodied in a single, reoccurring beat. Buh-dub. Buh-dub.

A primordial drum, beating in each of us. Buh-dub. Buh-dub.

Our personal metronome, our connection to musical beats. Buh-dub. Buh-dub.

Listen to your heart. Buh-dub. Buh-dub.

Listen to silence between the beats. Buh-dub. Buh-dub.

The spaces between the beats are what makes the beat musical. Buh-dub. Buh-dub.

Our personal connection between our thinking mind and our physical body. Buh-dub. Buh-dub.

Our personal connection to the universe, and our very existence. Buh-dub. Buh-dub.

I shift my head and can no longer hear or feel the beat. Sleep prevails in silence. I will forget the sound. I will not pay attention to my heartbeat again until my ear sits on my pillow in just the right way. Or when I vigorously exercise.

My heart will continue to work, to sustain me, to feed my cells with oxygen. I don’t need to hear it for it to work. I don’t need to hear it, but when I do it reminds me of how lucky I am. It reminds of how connected I am. It calms me and reminds me that I am grateful to be alive.

Buh-dub. Buh-dub.

Buh-dub. Buh-dub.

Buh-dub. Buh-dub…

Festive feelings

Yesterday I went to two different social gatherings, a breakfast and an after work event. The day before I was at a big Christmas dinner. It’s that time of year when we get together to celebrate, socialize, and fill our bellies with food. This past weekend I wrapped presents and stockings. Although my daughters are in their 20’s, they still get stockings to open on Christmas Day.

It’s wonderful to gather and spend time with family and friends. It makes me feel blessed to work in an environment where I feel helpful, useful, and productive. I feel blessed to be in a loving family that actually likes spending time together. And I enjoy the festivities that we hold this time of year.

Gathering with people you care about and enjoy being with is special, and it reminds me how important it is to find the time to connect and to be social. It makes me wonder why I don’t make more of an effort to do so when it’s not for a special occasion. There are good reasons to connect all year, we don’t need to wait until a holiday, or year’s end to feel festive and to gather with friends… we can be festive any time of year.

A five minute job it wasn’t.

Yesterday I changed a toilet seat. It’s a 5 minute job… until I tried to do it. Unfortunately for me one of the old metal screws was rusted and even though the head could take both a flathead and the Robertson square head, they were both stripped in a matter of minutes of trying to use them. Then the plastic bolt got shredded and I was stuck. Exasperating the issue, the toilet is in a tiny alcove and I had to use my phone like a mirror just to see the bolt.

I spent way too long trying to somehow grip the screw head and undo the bold, leaning over the bowl and messing with the bolt I couldn’t directly see. It was futile, but I’m stubborn and continued to waste my time. But it actually wasn’t a complete waste because I shredded the old washer and that provided a little room between the toilet top and the screw head.

What was my next step? I took a new hacksaw blade and stuck it between the toilet top and the screw, and with a tiny 2 to 3-inch back-and-forth motion I cut the screw. It was a process that took over 10 minutes to do. The whole process left an absolute mess to clean up behind the toilet, and from start to finish I was there for close to an hour and a half.

I seem to be cursed when it comes to doing anything ‘handy’. It doesn’t matter what the job is, I end up taking much longer than expected to complete it. Eighteen times longer in this case. I made about 7 or 8 trips to the basement. At least it was only one trip to the hardware store to buy the seat, usually it ends up being 2-3 visits. I always end the job just relieved it’s over rather than having any sense of accomplishment.

My rule of thumb is, don’t start a a quick handyman job unless I have at least two hours to get it done, because for me there is no such thing as a 5-minute repair.

The sci-fi try

I don’t usually listen to fictional books during the school year. I usually wait for the breaks, in summer, winter, and March, to pick up a ‘fun’ book. But I started a sci-fi that is about the moon breaking up from a mysterious and sudden catastrophic event. The earth then has roughly 2 years to get as large a community into space before being destroyed by moon debris crashing into earth at a rate that makes earth a fiery hell.

The technical aspects of the book are great. It’s easy to nerd out on the science and to imagine the challenges the survivors must face. The only issue I’m having with the book is that it doesn’t share the loss of life in a compassionate way. The story lacks heart.

It tries, but fails to put loss of life in a way that lets the reader feel grief over the loss. The author is more interested in the science than the humanity. He makes attempts but they aren’t great. Yet the book is still good. I’m only 1/3 of the way through and it will be the Christmas break before I get through it. I’ll let the shortcomings go and enjoy nerding out on the science and the idea of the future of humanity and civilization resting on an ad hoc space colony.

Not all stories need to be perfect to be enjoyable. Sometimes you have to make choices. This book lets me geek out without getting too heavy into the devastation of the entire earth… and I’m just one generation in. From what I understand the story spans a few thousand years. I won’t be putting the story down just because it feels a little clinical in how it deals with death. Because ultimately (so far) it’s a story about survival in desperate times, and under dire circumstances, and I’m hooked on finding out what this dystopian future holds.

I chose a science fiction, not a romance novel, and I’m getting a good dose of both science and fiction. For those interested, the book is Neil Stephenson’s Seveneves.

Time on task

A running joke as principal of a school is that the biggest part of the job is ‘other duties as assigned’. It’s the things you don’t expect in your day, like mopping up a mess, or being first aid attendant, or problem solving an issue you never dealt with before, and never thought you would. A vice principal I had many years ago said, “Being a VP is only a 4-hour a day job, the problem is you usually get almost none of that work done between 8:30am and 4pm.

The thing that I find most challenging is time on task… and staying on task. When there are 1,000 little interruptions in a day, it often takes time to get back into what you are doing. Something that could be done in 20 minutes uninterrupted can end up taking well over half a day to get done, and 25-30 minutes on task to do because each time you come back to the task you’ve got to figure things out again.

I had an issue recently where I was going back and forth with a parent on email. It was for something we are planning together. He sent me an email, I followed up with the planning with a teacher and got back to the parent… except I didn’t??? He emailed a week+ later asking for my response. I went to my sent mail, searched my drafts, the response I thought I sent wasn’t sent. I did have a response and exchange with the teacher in Microsoft Teams but did not send a response to the parent. Everything is good now, but I hate the idea that we were both waiting on each other and the holdup was me.

Stuff like that doesn’t happen often but when it does, it’s usually when I’m juggling too many things at once. The ‘other duties as assigned’ add elements of both surprise and distraction to your day and staying focused on all the metaphorical balls you are juggling isn’t easy.

Using the juggling metaphor reminded me of another metaphor a friend shared a while ago: “Stuff, not people.”

“Stuff, not people. When things get really busy, and you can’t do everything, things will ‘fall off the back of your truck’. When that happens, make sure that it’s stuff, and not people.”

As we head into the holidays, a stressful and very busy time for many, this is an important reminder… at least for me… that a list of tasks can wait, a lot of interruptions are important parts of my day. And while my tasks can feel important, they aren’t as important as the people I work with and for.

Intolerance for bad faith actors

I have always been a pretty strong advocate for free speech. To me it’s the underpinning of a robust democratic society. We don’t have to like what someone says, but they have a right to say it as long as it isn’t hate speech or harmful to someone. We shouldn’t allow racism, threats, and doxing, but we should allow differences of opinions and even angry rants when they are not threatening to a person or group of people.

But I’m struggling with the lack of good faith that I’m seeing. In our country, I see a lot of protests and anger towards our Prime Minister. I believe people should be allowed to protest and share their concerns, but when I see articles like, ‘Attack on Trudeau unsurprising, experts say, warning of future violence against politicians‘ stating that he was “pelted with gravel while at a campaign stop in London, Ont.” Or I read that he was heckled so loudly that he couldn’t continue a speech… Then that is going way too far. This isn’t protest, it’s fascist, it is intolerant and oppressive.

There is a difference between voicing concerns and harassment. There is a difference between protesting and threatening, there is a difference between peaceful, civil behavior and what seems to be happening today.

If I was to describe my politics, I’m definitely left of center. And while I fundamentally disagree with many things Ben Shapiro thinks and says, I get upset when I read articles that he can’t even speak at a university because of safety concerns… And that was 6 years ago! Things are even worse now. Much worse.

When I recently read, “The presidents of three of the nation’s top universities are facing intense backlash, including from the White House, after being accused of evading questions during a congressional hearing about whether calls by students for the genocide of Jews would constitute harassment under the schools’ codes of conduct.” I am deeply concerned. Should students be allowed to protest? Absolutely! Should they be allowed to promote genocide of any person or people as part of their protest? Absolutely not.

It’s an easy line to draw. Absolutely not. That’s acting in bad faith. That’s undermining our democracy and our freedoms.

We need to differentiate how we handle protests and free speech by people who are acting in good faith from those acting in bad faith. The very rights and freedoms we are given in a free and democratic society depend on us doing so. When we give those freedoms to people that abuse them, we subvert our own liberty. We diminish our freedoms and allow others, with harmful words and actions, to impose less civil values on us.

When free speech is misused, it harms us all. When violence is advocated or permitted; when protests prevent civil conversation and debate; when harassment is permitted; we all suffer. We can’t let people acting in bad faith weaken our civil liberties. We can’t just expect people to act in good faith, the minority who don’t will be too disruptive. We need to squash the bad faith actors. The trick is that we need to do so with legal actions. We need to have zero tolerance for intolerance, and we need to create laws that clearly restrict and penalize threats, hate crimes, and malice.

This is known as the paradox of tolerance, “The paradox of tolerance states that if a society’s practice of tolerance is inclusive of the intolerant, intolerance will ultimately dominate, eliminating the tolerant and the practice of tolerance with them. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that, in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.”

Instead, what I am seeing is things like this happening:

People who have caused over a decade of harm to others do not deserve a social media platform. That’s not censorship, that’s prevention of further malice, pain, and suffering to innocent people. As I contemplate leaving Twitter, news like this makes me lean towards shutting down my account. But I don’t pretend that will have any meaningful impact beyond my own peace of mind.

The acceptance of bad faith actors has been building over the past decade, and we are deep into the consequences now. Free speech should only be a right for people who act in good faith. There can be disagreement, there can be discourse, there can even be civil arguments and protests. What there can’t be are bad faith actors and activists using free speech as a mechanism to promote harmful ideas, hate, violence, and disruptions to public discourse. For this we need zero tolerance.

Related: Ideas on a Spectrum

First snowfall

This morning I went for my weekly walk with my buddy. It was a little chilly but there seemed to be an inversion and as we climbed the Coquitlam Crunch it got warmer.

The weather was really perfect. Then we got to our usual coffee shop and the rain began. Just after I dropped my buddy home I drove up the hill to my home and the rain turned into snow. For the next couple hours there was a light, wet snowfall and I decided this was a great opportunity for a hot tub.

If you live in Vancouver, you can’t let bad weather keep you indoors. We got lucky on our walk, some of our walks won’t be as lucky in January or February. It’s dark for most of the day, darker when the weather is bad. As I write this at 3pm it looks like we are approaching dusk outside. My Christmas lights are on a timer to go on at 4pm.

One way to combat the winter blues is to be outside. Dress for it, stay cosy, and don’t let a little snow get in the way. Winter doesn’t need to be an indoor season.