Category Archives: Daily-Ink

Tattoo number two

It took me over 15 years from the first time I thought about it to finally getting my second tattoo. About 16 or 17 years ago I jammed my ring finger playing basketball and I had issues getting my ring on and off. But when I tried a wider ring I couldn’t close the gap between my ring and pinky fingers and that drove me crazy. So I didn’t wear a ring.

When my wife surprised me for my 40th birthday with a trip to Vegas, I decided one night that I was going to get a ring tattoo. It was a 3am decision and we couldn’t find a place that was open. I tried again one late night in Vancouver, years later. No luck. I was going to go again when covid hit, and that delayed things.

On our recent trip to Barcelona my wife and daughters got tattoos and I had one picked out, but we arrived at the tattoo parlour 40 minutes before closing and they didn’t have time for me after my family got theirs…

It seemed like I was never going to get this tattoo!

Then this past March break I booked an appointment with my friend’s daughter who is a tattoo artist… and I had to cancel when I ended up staying in Toronto longer than originally expected. And now, finally, I got it done! 15+ years in the planning and here it is:

The original rough sketch had two lines going completely around my finger but I didn’t like the way it broke up the first triangle so I left it out at the last minute, knowing it could be added if I didn’t like it as-is. However I really do like it and I’m glad I left that line out. Symbolically, the front triangle is for my wife and the two behind are for my daughters.

I know finger tattoos tend to fade, especially on the palm side, but I wanted the full circle and I’ll let it fade over time naturally. Maybe I’ll get it touched up when I get my 3rd tattoo… but at this rate that could be a decade or two away! 😜

4-day weekend

I’m looking forward to the Easter Break! Having both the Friday and Monday off is a treat. A 3-day weekend is nice, but getting that extra days makes this break special. It becomes a ‘real’ break where I know that I can actually let go of thinking about work. It allows true down time.

I find that a 4th day makes the break into a real holiday… and I can come back to work refreshed. I’d give up my second week of holidays at Christmas so that I could get a few more 4-day weekends throughout the year. I’m not sure that would be popular with everyone, but it would be ideal for me… Mini holidays throughout the year! Am I the only one that thinks this is a good idea?

Maintenance mode

I’ve been struggling with an upper back injury that has involved shooting pains down my shoulder and neck pain and stiffness for over a month now. It’s frustrating. Regular massage and physiotherapy help but so has pain medication. I try to avoid taking painkillers (with chronic back issues there is almost always a reason to take something, so I only do so when the pain is restrictive and unrelenting), but I’ve had no choice the last few weeks.

This has made my fitness routine hard to follow. But I can still get on an exercise bicycle and not hurt my back. I can walk on a treadmill, and my hand movements help loosen my back. Running is out of the question. Still, I can also do leg workouts that don’t involve weights. And of course I can stretch… and need to be stretching.

Fitness isn’t just about constant improvement, it’s also about going into maintenance mode and doing *something* to take care of your body. Fifteen years ago my back would crash and it would takes months to recover. Now, this issue I’m dealing with is the worst I’ve dealt with in years. I know that a focus on fitness is what has reduced my down time, my days feeling hurt enough that pains and discomfort are constantly on my mind. However, the lack of these experiences over the last few years amplifies just how much this bothers me right now.

Yet while the pain is bothersome and pretty consuming, I am thankful that this is now an anomaly and no longer the norm. I’m thankful that I can still get some exercise in and maintain my fitness enough that I’m not having to start over when I recover. A commitment to exercise even when I’m struggling, and to be smart enough not to overdo it or exasperate the injury, helps me stay focused on my long term fitness goals.

It’s not about giving 100% a hundred percent of the time. It’s about showing up every day and doing something to care for myself. Some days that means pushing what I can do. Some days that means choosing one part of my routine to do at maximum effort. And some days that means doing the bare minimum. What’s not a viable option is opting out.

Communication gap

A decade ago I had a digital network that was pretty amazing. There were educators from many distant places, across Canada, the US, and the world, who I knew through Twitter conversations and conferences. This network was pretty amazing, and while we were seldom, if ever, in the same geographical location, I felt connected to these people.

But Twitter changed and I changed. I ended up not participating in this network nearly as much, and the gap between conversations with these people widened. Sure I still consider these people I met through rich conversational exchanges friends, but I don’t chat with them like I used to. I don’t know them like I used to.

It’s easy to get nostalgic and want the old connections back, but the network isn’t as easy to maintain. The conversations don’t seem to be as rich in learning opportunities. The value for time ratio seems lower. But I do miss those deep learning opportunities, the long blog posts with 15-25 comments, and the subsequent Twitter dialogue that continued the learning.

The connections I miss were rooted in learning conversations. Conversations that I might now have in person, but seldom have online. I don’t engage in online conversations like I used to. I auto post this blog to Twitter, LinkedIn, and a Facebook page, and then I really only go on those networks to respond to comments but I don’t go to them for conversations… unless someone responds to my post, then I respond back.

That’s not the way I used to engage. I used to read and respond, I used to question and compliment. I used to actively seek out conversation and connections. So, while social media has changed, so have I. I’ve started seeking videos to learn from, not conversations. I’ve moved to searching for content and viewing, rather than using Twitter like Google, asking questions and letting my network help me.

I miss the conversations that used to happen, but I don’t imagine I’ll ever rebuild what I had. The effort seems too great at this point, and even the people I see still making those connections tend to be ones who travel and maintain those relationships with face-to-face connections… the relationships purely connected by social media network engagement just don’t seem to be there anymore. It’s not a mutual relationship, but a network of influencers and followers, not friends.

Perhaps that will change in the future but for now I see a gap in the way conversations happen online compared to how they used to happen, and I don’t see a social media network that is changing this any time soon.

Insignificantly small

I’ve been following updates from the James Webb Telescope and its fascinating to see how its expanding our knowledge of our universe. Recent news includes an “active supermassive black hole 10 million times the mass of the Sun”. (MSN)

To give this a different perspective on the physical size of this black hole. Our entire galaxy would fill less than 1% of this black hole. It’s hard to comprehend just how big this is. It boggles the mind to think of the scale of the universe. 500 years ago the work of Copernicus and Galileo helped change modern physics by defying the church and arguing that the Earth was not the centre of the universe, with our sun circling the earth. Now we can see the insignificance of our planet on the scale of the universe.

We are so insignificantly small. Furthermore, we know so little about our universe… and it’s exciting to know that new discoveries and theories are still being developed thanks to this telescope. We may not inhabit a significant part of the universe, but our knowledge of what’s beyond our galaxy is expanding. I find this exciting!

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Another fascinating point that boggles the mind with respect to the size of things in our universe: the radius of the star, UY Scuti is 1,700 times bigger than our sun. It would engulf Jupiter if it replaced our sun! (Source)

Flaked out

I spent almost the entire day on the couch. I watched the NCAA Women’s Championship basketball game, the first full sports event I’ve seen on television in years. I slept. I left my phone charging away from me a good part of the day. I slept some more.

I finally got off the couch and got on the treadmill at 5:30pm, and I’m back on it an hour and a half later writing this. Now the day wasn’t a total waste, I had a great Zoom conversation with my uncle early this morning. And I had a bit of work that needed to happen, but beyond that the day was spent on the couch doing nothing.

Normally I’d look at this day and think of the time on the couch as wasted. But not today. I’ve had very little sleep the last few weeks thanks to a back and shoulder issue. I’ve felt like I haven’t been running on all cylinders, and I needed some flake out time.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to get back to doing a whole lot of nothing for at least a couple more hours. Maybe I’ll end the evening with a hot tub. Guilt free pleasures on a Sunday night. And I have no regrets for taking the time to do not much of anything… completely guilt free.

No small parts

In the last 3 nights I’ve seen my daughter in the musical Carrie, a Broadway Across Canada presentation of Pretty Woman the Musical, and my daughter again in her final performance of Carrie.

I was reminded of the Konstantin Stanislavski quote: “There are no small parts, only small actors”. A stage performance requires every actor to play their part big or small. When they all do, the performance shines.

How many people are there where we play a small role in their lives? Are we playing small but important roles? Or are we just small actors? I think we have the choice to do either… and while it may not seem like a big role to us, it can be for the others we have a role with.

No small parts.

Time and attention

I feel like in the last 5-10 years i’ve seen a shift in how time and attention are spent. Distractions are everywhere, especially in our phones that are almost always within reach. Distractions take time. Distractions draw our attention. But what about when we aren’t distracted?

When phones with on demand social media, streaming movies and series, and time sucking games or scrolling are not what we are doing, what then? Are we being efficient? Are we dedicating time to the right things, the things we say are the priorities in our life? And when we do spend this time, are we doing so with our full attention?

That’s the key question: when I’m giving of my time, am I also giving of my full attention?

What, and more importantly who, deserves your full attention?

Looking back in time

It’s hard to grasp the idea that when we look at a star, we are looking at that star from an era long ago. Even when we look at our own sun, we only see it as it was 8 minutes ago, because that’s how long the light takes to get to us. The closest star to us is Proxima Centauri at 4.25 light years away. When we see the light from this star we are seeing it as it shone 4.25 years ago.

When we look at the night sky, we are looking at a history of the universe, with each distant star sharing a different part of its past with us.

We look at people who are close to us in the same way. We don’t just see them, we see our past with them. We see the last time we met. Did we get along or did we have a conflict? Did we create a fond memory or did we face a problem? Did we grow closer together or does the distance from our last meeting make us feel farther apart?

In a way, relationships can be like distant stars, fading into the past unless we make an effort to see people in a new light. Because our connection to people comes from the way we look at our previous interactions, our history together. This is all we have until we shed new light on one another. Glimpses of history that tell stories… be they stories of our universe or stories of friendship. In both cases we are looking at our past to make sense of our future.

Fun escape

Yesterday we took our students bowling. Our PAC, Parent Advisory Council, paid for the event. With my back issues I didn’t bowl, but it was great to see students and staff having a fun afternoon together.

Bowling is a fun sport where students are a lot more equalized in skill than many other sports. Most people don’t know how to bowl well, and while athleticism can help, being athletic doesn’t make you a good bowler.

For us, it’s an affordable, fun event and the bowling alley is a 5 minute walk from our school so there’s no transportation costs. I wish I got to participate, but it was still great to see students having fun in a completely different context. Sometimes we can take school too seriously, and forget that kids are still kids. An event like this is a good reminder.