Category Archives: Daily-Ink

A messy desk

I’m not good with paper. I tend to have a desk filled with not-so-neatly piled papers. The piles accumulate and accumulate, then about 2 months after my last desk clean I look for something on my desk and I can’t find it, and that’s my cue that it’s time to clean it up again. Before that point, someone can ask me for something and I instantly find it, even if I have to go down a few layers. But when I have to start searching, not knowing where something is, that is no longer acceptable.

I also write notes on post-its and tend to have anywhere from 6-12 of them on the go at any time. It’s not efficient, and could be a lot more effective. I’ll find a first name and a phone number on a post-it note and have no memory of who the person is, and what I called them about. But, I didn’t throw the post-it away and it’s on my desk two months later.

I remember taking an organization course online that taught a filling system where everything went into a monthly folder. I failed to use this effectively for about 3 months, but the useless folders stayed on my desk for many more months after that… just a constant reminder of my inability to use them effectively.

Starting this coming week I’m going to try something new. I’m going to set two daily alarms, one in the morning and one in the late afternoon. The morning alarm will be to tidy my post-its so that I have a maximum of two post-its on my desk, with one being my ‘To-Do’ list for the day. My afternoon alarm will be to organize any paper that came my way, and get it in a folder or off my desk.

I’m setting a calendar reminder to look back at this post 2 months from now, that should be long enough to see what my desk looks like after after I do the clean-up on Monday.

Favourite question

Inquiry Hub is a school where students need to be self directed. A good portion of a student’s day is determined by the student. On any give school day students can have 1-3 hours where they are deciding what they want to work on. There is always work to be done for courses. There’s always a student chosen inquiry to work on. There’s always a distraction that can pull them away from their work, since they have full access to their laptops and the internet, and access to any other personal device they bring to school.

It’s a subject of a future post, but I’d love to develop a K-12 Inquiry Hub with a vision where it’s a school for every kid. But we get students at grade 9, and if they come to us without self-directed skills, and distractions prevent them from independently working and getting things done during their school day, or if they don’t self advocate when they are stuck, then our school becomes a really challenging place. It becomes a place where a student is always overwhelmed, or catching up on work, and never doing their inquiry projects… which is precisely why they came to our school.

When we interview our applicants (an interview with students and parents), we have a series of questions we ask, which really help us uncover their learning habits, and if they will thrive in our school. One question that we ask near the end doesn’t always tell us a lot about this, but it’s my favourite question. “Tell me about a time when you really had to work hard to accomplish something.” I then elaborate, “You felt a great deal of accomplishment when you were done, but it wasn’t easy.” And, “It doesn’t have to be school related.”

This question is about grit. It digs into a personal story of perseverance. And students often share some really interesting stories. We often learn about an aspect of their lives that we would not have learned otherwise, like the student has their black belt in Karate, or they’ve done 8 years of dance. I also like asking it at the end of the interview, because it finishes the interview with students thinking about something that gave them a good sense of accomplishment.

Last night we did our last scheduled interview, and I’m looking forward to a freer evening schedule, but overall, I really enjoy the process we go through and we end up with some truly amazing kids in our school. Students who thrive and find their tribe.

Cuddle cat

The newest part of my morning routine is that while I sit in our basement, covered in a blanket, writing my morning post, my cat jumps on my lap for a cuddle. Sometimes he naps.

He used to only jump up if we had his brush in our hand, but since the disruption of our house for renovations, he has adopted the habit of coming on our laps even if we don’t have the brush. He stays for all of 5 minutes then he’ll go lie down on his scratching pad, but it’s nice to have our cat jump up and sit on us without having to bribe him with a brush.

His only other cuddle time is early in the morning when he will put his paws on my chest and wake me up. I pet him for a few seconds, then he goes on top of my wife, purrs for a few seconds, then cuddles in on top of her head. I don’t mean next to her head, I mean he full on spoons her head and puts his head on top of hers. He will sleep there for 10-20 minutes.

If my wife is on her back, he will do this on her chest and tuck his head under her chin. But usually she’s on her side and he nests on top of her head.

He never cuddles with me in bed. I get a chuckle out of the fact that he wakes me up just long enough to see him cuddle with my wife. It’s like he’s saying, “Hey you, look what I get to go do.” 🤣

Anyway, this new routine doesn’t slow me down, it just helps my day start off in a great way. Nothing like your pet giving you a little cuddle to start your morning off right.

Tiny little moments

Some days slip bye and when you look back, it’s hard to say what you did to fill them. On those days I try to think of small yet special moments:

A laugh with colleagues.

A good conversation.

A delicious snack.

A kind gesture.

A selfish moment.

A selfless moment.

A single accomplishment.

It doesn’t have to be a big thing, it just has to be something that I can identify that made the day a good day.

When you read quotes about life, you read things like, “Life isn’t measured by the breaths we take but by the moments that take our breath away.” That sounds beautiful, but how many daily ‘take your breath away’ moments do you really live in your daily life?

No, life’s not just about the breathtakingly special moments… it’s about filling you life with, and appreciating, the tiny little moments that make life worth living.

Revenge of the herd

I’ve been noticing a new trend on social media. Some ‘Karen’ acts out and does something inappropriate on video. That video goes viral. Someone with a large following asks their audience to identify the person, or they dig into what the ‘Karen’ thinks is an anonymous profile they posted on, and their real identity is discovered. Then the viral video or mean/racist/rude comment is shared with their boss or the company they work for, and the person is fired. Then the person that did this gloats, often going viral with the news of the person losing their job.

There is no doubt that some of these people deserve this. If you are choosing, in this day and age, to be blatantly racist, or to ridicule someone handicapped or less fortunate than you… and you work representing a company who does not (and should not) share the same lack of values… well then that company should be able to say they no longer wish to have you work for/represent them.

That’s the power of living in a connected world. When enough people are involved in looking for you, you can’t be anonymous on the internet. Act poorly in public, and that behaviour can be traced back to you, even if you don’t share your name or any other personal information.

Some behaviour is truly deserving of this. For example, someone spewing racial slurs, or physically abusing a store employee for getting an order wrong. However this trend concerns me a bit. It is about revenge rather than restitution. Where is the line? If a person says something in anger should their entire livelihood be destroyed? How bad does the transgression need to be? Who decides?

When it comes to issues like this, I’m not sure the herd mentality is always appropriate? When does the herd become a mob? At what point does a bad decision equate to someone being a bad person? And again, who decides?

Are many of these people deserving of the consequences? Probably. Maybe not all of them though. Furthermore, I don’t think this kind of retribution necessarily changes attitudes and behaviours.

The trend often ends with the line, “Enjoy the day you deserve.” But the aftermath of losing a job, and trying to support a family, and social ridicule, and embarrassment seems like it could be worse than a short term prison sentence. How big a transgression should it be to go through this? Again, I think some people act in a truly reprehensible way and deserve to have consequences, but I worry that some people will suffer far more than they deserve. When this happens the point seems to be more about inflicting suffering rather than creating an opportunity for forgiveness and restitution. I don’t want to live in a world where revenge is the first form of conflict resolution.

Compliance and conspiracy

The biggest problem with most conspiracy theories is that they require way too much compliance from too many people to be true. Secrets are hard to keep. Big secrets are impossible. The idea that hundreds or thousands of people are somehow in on the conspiracy and yet it still isn’t known to the vast majority of people is unlikely.

Want to keep a secret? Tell no one. Not a single person. Because if you yourself can’t keep that secret, how will others keep it? Why would others keep it? How many spouses, best friends, and drinking buddies would find out?

The world is flat. Really? Every commercial pilot would need to be keeping that secret, and somehow be compliant in hiding impossible travel times in some far-fetched scheme that would also include countless passengers on certain flights.

The vaccine has a microchip in it that tracks your movement or controls your mind. Really? Do you really believe that technology has advanced so far that these things are possible at a microscopic level? How many people would know about this? Who manufactures these devices? How many vaccine production companies faculties, with how many employees wound have to be compliant? Impossible science with impossible amounts of people knowing and keeping it a secret.

The numbers just don’t add up. There is no such thing as a secret that 100 people know and keep. Move into thousands of people knowing and it’s simply impossible to remain a secret. In this day and age, there would be concrete evidence being shared by people. Contracts, videos, photographs, and stories backed by hard evidence.

Imagine if the thousands of people who designed and built the James Webb Space Telescope all knew the earth was flat, why would they build something that looked at round objects all over the galaxy that undermine their understanding of what the world looks like? Would not a single one of them feel like they were hypocrites? Not a single one of them would speak out?

You can’t have so many people involved and keep a secret. Human beings are incapable of this. And yet most conspiracy theories demand this level of compliance for information to stay secret, and for the theory to be more than a theory and actually exist.

Sad irony

There is a truck convoy in Ottawa and thousands of people are protesting vaccine and mask mandates. I’ll be generous and say there are 10,000 people there protesting. That’s 0.026% of the population not 2.6%, not .26%, 0.026%. Double that if you consider people who wanted to join them, you are still just over 0.05% of the population.

This small but loud group has a right to peacefully protest, they don’t deserve so much attention. I have been bypassing the news about them in my feed, but I did see one thing that was really pathetic. One of the things some protesters did was to put signs on a Terry Fox statue. Terry Fox, a Canadian hero who:

A) Was immunocompromised and might have been an example of the kind of person who we are trying to protect with these restrictions, because he might have had a vaccine exemption.

B) Raised millions of dollars for medical research.

Wow. Talk about missing the point.

I hope the small unvaccinated population in Ottawa end their peaceful protest without harming anyone or damaging any property, and they don’t end up taking too much more of our attention.

And while I’m at it, thank you to everyone who understands that these (temporary) mandates and restrictions are to help protect our community, and for doing your part. You have my appreciation, and my attention.

Zip it

The hardest problem with blogging every day, and working in a small school environment is that a lot of content I want to share, I simply can’t. I started writing a post just now and realized it would be too easy for people close to the school to know which student or family I was referring to. I wasn’t writing anything bad, but the specifics of what I wanted to share would make it so that it was clear who I was talking about… and that’s not fair unless I ask permission to do so.

Often when I talk about my family, I’ll say ‘my daughter’… I have two daughters and don’t usually mention who I’m talking about by name. Again, I’m not saying anything disparaging, but I’m trying to be respectful and not bring them up when I wrote something at 5:30 in the morning and set it to be published a little later that morning, but before I speak to either of them.

I’m often surprised to see people sharing video clips or Facebook posts where it’s obvious the person they are talking about (often family members) would surely disapprove of or be unhappy to have shared. But this seems quite commonplace these days. I think “reality” TV shows promote this. The ‘Real Wives of [[Any City]]’ is an example of this. They backstab each other knowing full well that the person they are backstabbing will see them do it on the show… and then they face each other later with smiles on their faces like there was no harm done.

It’s like these shows grant people permission to be jerks who (over)share things that really should never be shared publicly. But other people’s bad behaviour really shouldn’t influence us to do the same. Some things are better off not being said, or written, in public spaces.

I think sometimes it’s just best to ‘zip it’, and let some things stay in your head, and not be shared ‘out loud’ in any format. I wish more people thought this way too. Maybe the sample size of my school is too small to make generalizations, but I think kids today get this more than the kids of 5-10 years ago. I hope this is a positive trend that catches on.

Who isn’t playing Wordle?

I am not someone that keeps up with trends. Never have been. Right now it seems that many, many people I know are playing Wordle daily. Not me.

From what I understand, you are trying to find a 5 letter word, you start with a guess, and if you get a letter that’s right, but in the wrong place, you get a yellow square over that letter. If you get the right letter in the right place, it becomes a green square.

Basically this is the game Mastermind with letters in instead of colours, only the setup of the hidden pieces isn’t random, it has to be an actual word. And your game card is only 6 words long.

It looks like fun. People seem to be connecting over it. I have nothing bad to say about it… I’m just not adding it as yet another digital distraction to my day. At least now I have enough knowledge about what’s going on so that when I see something like this, I actually understand it.

If like me, you aren’t playing along, now you know a bit more about it. For those that are playing daily… I saw a TikTok that said IRATE was the best starting word, but no! According to a computer scientist that did the calculations, it’s LATER. You are welcome, and have fun!

Spicing up a recipe

I shared this tweet before, but the post was more about life than cooking:

I’m not a big fan of cooking, but I have certain recipes that I do quite well. One of them is a stir fry. Last night’s was really good! I’m not just saying that because I enjoyed it, both my wife and daughter complimented it, and my daughter said, “I have to slow down so I can enjoy this longer.”

I didn’t use a recipe as my baseline. I didn’t measure anything. I just added things that I thought should go together. I cooked the peppers, red onion, carrots, and beans longer than the broccoli, which I cooked longer than the green onions and cilantro. I added way more sesame oil than any recipe I’ve ever followed, and way less soy. And I added a whole lot of garlic powder. This no-recipe-as-a-base approach doesn’t always work, but my stir fry always does.

One of my favourite things to do is to start with a recipe then go on a tangent. This is a lot less risky than flying by the seat of my pants, and it makes cooking fun for me. A couple days ago we made tacos, and when I went to the fridge for salsa I saw sweet chili pepper sauce and decided to try it instead… Absolutely delicious!

I don’t like easy puzzles, and to me a recipe is an easy puzzle… I like to spice things up a bit, and I’m usually glad I did.