The hard ask

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Too many people try to go solo when they have a community of support around them. There are more people around you willing to help you than you think. You just need to ask… and that’s the problem. The help isn’t always offered.

The people who can be most helpful would be glad to help if they just knew you needed help. The trick is to make contact and be clear about what you are hoping for.

There’s a difference between: “Do you have time to…?” And, “I really need you to help me right now.”

There’s a difference between: “Hey, just calling to say hi.” And, “I really needed a friend I could talk to right now.”

Too many times in my career, and in my personal life, I only realized after the fact that I could have gotten so much more support to get over a rough patch than I actually got, more than I asked for… only because I didn’t know how to ask, or that I could ask.

Sometimes I’ve thought I’d asked, but it was a soft ask, a sort of ‘help would be nice’ kind of ask rather than an, ‘I really need help’ kind of ask.

I get it, it would be great to have people realize that the soft ask wasn’t just an ask but a need. The thing is, everyone is knee deep in their own stuff and the soft ask can easily be missed. So don’t assume your soft ask is enough.

If you need help be clear, be blunt, and ask. It’s hard to do the hard ask… just do it anyway!

Haven’t the words

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In keeping up with the last 12 hours, I have to once again say, ‘I don’t have the words’. There are circumstances that we come across where those are the only words you have to give. You want to say more, but you can’t. You want to show support, but you don’t know how. You want to make sense, but it seems senseless.

Unapologetically vague. Sorry, haven’t the words.

It’s time to start

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I’ve been working out between 5-7 times a week for almost 7 years. It has been at least 2 years since I skipped two days in a row. To count a workout I do cardio, a stretch, and pick one muscle group to work pretty hard. Over 95% of my workouts are at home in my small basement gym. It has been a great routine and I’ve enjoyed it.

But I am feeling stuck now. I feel the limits of my small gym. I seem to fall into the trap of focusing in on a few workouts I like and avoiding getting to many muscles that I’d normally work out in a bigger gym. It’s not that I haven’t seen gains, I have. The gains just haven’t been evenly distributed.

I think it’s time for me to sign up at a gym. I feel the need to do more than my home gym provides. I don’t yet know how this will upset my morning routine? Maybe I’ll have to write at night? Maybe I’ll do cardio at a different time? Even with just a 15 minute drive to the gym, that’s still a half hour daily of driving to add to my routine.

I’ll admit that I’m a bit apprehensive about changing my morning routine, but I know this is a step I need to take. It will only be a challenge until the end of this school year, when I retire. The question I then ask myself is, why don’t I just wait until then to join the gym? The answer is, I just know that now is the right time.

We often spend much of our life waiting for the right time, rather than just doing the thing we want to do. My only holdback right now is that most gyms have deals at Christmas/New Years and I’d rather not pay a lot more than necessary because I didn’t wait a few days. Holding off for less than a month seems reasonable. Holding off for 7 months doesn’t. Even if I only use the gym 2-4 times a week to start, I think it will fill a void I’ve been feeling with my workouts, and will push me in a way that I’m struggling to push myself after 7 years in my tiny home gym.

Crappy user experience

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A bit of a rant here. I’m doing some medical expense claiming and my provider has an App that is not designed with the end user in mind. First I have to go to 3 different pages to make a claim. Then after all the claim details are entered, I have to scroll down on a confirmation page that has my address on individual lines that take up to much screen real-estate that the ‘Consent and Declaration’ is hidden under the ‘Submit’ button. So you end up hitting the Submit button only then to learn that you need to scroll down and click the consent, which opens up in another page.

Also, I use my laptop and phone for much of the day and don’t need reading glasses, but my pharmacy prints the details I need to make the above claim in tiny, hard to read font. This is so unnecessary. It’s already really confusing trying to locate all the information, which is spread out into 3 different sections of the prescription receipt, does it also need to be in microscopic font? This is the only thing I’ve had to put reading glasses on to see in the last few months.

I get tired of user interfaces that are designed for the product and not the user. The insurance company probably doesn’t want to claims to be easy to do, they’d rather you had to go through a more challenging process to make a claim. The pharmacy changed their format so that the prescription receipt gets printed on a small sticker, and I’m sure cost saving was more important to them than providing a readable receipt for their aging customers. And this kind of behaviour may or may not be intentional, but it is ignorant of the end user’s experience. I’ve complained before about inconsistencies in remote controls, apps that want your attention at the cost of your convenience, and how it feels like we are decades behind where we should be when doing things like setting up a new printer. I would say that over 95% of the things I rant about are related to products and services providing crappy user experiences.

How hard would it be to have the customer in mind as a priority, rather than an afterthought?

Feeling gratitude

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I think that gratitude is something to be celebrated. It is felt more when it is expressed and reflected on, not just experienced in the moment.

Yesterday I turned 58. I got to have an early morning coffee with a good friend, and I got to meet my daughters for a quick lunch. I had a couple cakes and many well wishes at work. Then I went to dinner and a movie with my wife and daughters after work. We were unexpectedly met at dinner by my wife’s sister and my brother-in-law at dinner, which was a very pleasant surprise.

It was a wonderful day all around. It ended with a few thoughtful gifts and cards at home after the show. My daughters have had a tradition of making personalized, hand-drawn birthday cards and I have always adored the thoughtfulness they put into them.

I can’t help but want to share my gratitude towards family, friends, and colleagues. I feel lucky, and blessed. Every year around the sun makes me feel more appreciative for the life I have lived and the opportunity to share more of it with the people I love.

The Last Time Theory

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I love this trend that’s going around. Parents are getting their grown kids to do things like jump into their arms, and wrap their feet around them, like they used to do as a little kid, to give a big hug for one last time. The theory is that you don’t remember the last time your kid did this, so do it one last time so that you will remember.

Back on Christmas Day 2024 I wrote ‘Firsts and Lasts’ about this same idea. The post, written to my daughters, starts like this:

“I remember. 

I remember the moment in the hospital when I first laid eyes on you; the first time I held you, and kissed your cheek. I remember your first smile, (that wasn’t just passing gas), your first laugh, and the first time you said, ‘Da-da’. I remember your first steps. There were so many firsts in those early days and, although they slowed, they still kept coming. From your first tooth to your first tooth falling out. From your first day at daycare to your first day at school. And from your first birthday to your last one as a teenager.

And so it is that I remember many firsts, but unfortunately I don’t remember too many lasts. 

I don’t remember the last time you fell asleep on my chest or came running towards me and jumped unabashedly into my arms for a big hug. I don’t remember the last time we were walking together and you reached up to hold my hand. I don’t remember the last time I did a push up with you on my back, or the last time you danced on my feet, or the last time I gave you a piggyback.

And such is life that as we grow up together, parent and child, we carry with us these moments, momentous ‘first’ occasions, but we never know what other forgotten moments disappear as we get older. We remember the firsts, not the lasts. We savour the memories of so many special occasions, and we lament those things that we take for granted only after they no longer happen.”

There are a lot of silly trends that go viral, and send ripples across the internet. This one isn’t silly, it’s heartwarming and wonderful. Parents trying to recapture a special moment with their child long after they’ve done something for the last time. I hope this trends lasts a while and impacts a lot of people.

______

((Cover image source))

Facing a mismatch

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I had a bit of an epiphany yesterday morning. It wasn’t great. I had a vision for something I had planned to do in the future and I was suddenly faced with the reality that it wasn’t going to live up to the hype I had built up. I envisioned it completely differently to the reality of what it was. Now it has me questioning my plans I thought I had set. It’s not a huge deal but when this kind of reality sets in, it’s a bit of a wake up call.

It reminds me of a video I once made. It was called Brave New World Wide Web. I started building the slideshow and I had a Cure song, Just Like Heaven, in my head. It was going to be perfect, the long lyric-less intro was going to be an ideal opening. I would play the song in the car to and from work, and I couldn’t wait to put the video together.

Then it was finally time to sync the slides to the song, and it… just… didn’t… work. It was awful. I remember walking out of our little home office absolutely dejected. I’d built it up in my mind as the perfect marriage of song and slides and it wasn’t to be. A few hours later I found a song that couldn’t have worked better and all was good.

Yesterday morning I had another one of those unexpected moments. In the end, it’s not going to be a big deal, but in that ‘it just isn’t going to work’ vision-doesn’t-match-reality moment I felt like I was slapped in the face. It was a wake up call I didn’t know I needed.

It’s time to start thinking about a plan B. I’m metaphorically looking for the next song, one that will work. I found one for my video, I’ll find one for this… I just didn’t know until yesterday that I’d have to have an alternate plan. The great news is, I’ve got time. No rush, just a wake up call that there’s a mismatch between my vision and reality that needs to be sorted out. I’m glad that I see it now, and not a year from now.

Time under tension

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One of the principles of exercising to develop muscle is time under tension. How much time are you working the muscle for?

Learning is similar. For how long are we challenging ourselves before giving up?

Resilience is similar. We cannot strengthen our resilience unless we face things that are challenging us for longer than we could previously tolerate.

I think sometimes we focus too much on making experiences easier, when what we really need is to create greater time under tension.

Pay to use

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Is it just me or is everyone feeling the drain of subscription fees? My wife bought a scale that also gives biometrics. The app is free, but you get ‘so much more’ with the subscription. Looking into the cost of this, I see that it is $129.99 a year or 19.99 a month.

It seems every app wants you to subscribe, but the cost is excessive. I don’t mind paying $12 a year to remove the ads from an app I use regularly and enjoy, but I don’t need all the bells and whistles for $10 to $20 a month. And I don’t need the reminders of all those features I’m missing out on every few times that I open the app.

Going back to the scale, it’s designed to not just weigh you, but to give you other biometrics as well… it’s those other features that made my wife buy it, at a much higher price, rather than buying a regular scale. So, if I buy the product, why should I pay monthly to use it? And if those added features cost money to maintain, well then figure out a cost structure that isn’t so expensive.

Small yearly subscriptions make sense when you want to continuously add features and content, or provide upgrades and maintenance. But just how many $10-$20 a month subscriptions can we manage? And do we really need to pay our scale that much? If it was just the scale, I could imagine a scenario where I’d be invested enough in what it provides to pay this much, but when it’s every product and app that does this, it’s simply unsustainable.

Almost free

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I remember being a young kid when a door-to-door salesman came to our house and sold my dad a Junior Encyclopedia set. I was amazed at all the information in there. I could just think of any topic and it seemed that there was an entry for it.

In Grade 10 or 11 I took a programming course in high school. I don’t remember much other than having to punch little dots out of cards and handing them in. My teacher would bring them back to us the next class with a printout of the instructions we created with these punch cards.

At the time, I owned a Commodore Vic 20 which had 20k of memory. I remember buying the 16k adapter cartridge so that I could have 36k of memory, but I can’t remember why I wanted the extra data. I think I was writing a book on bass fishing with my buddy on the Commodore and we were using up too much space.

Now our fridges can do more than my Vic 20, and our phones give us access to quite literally any information we desire. Computers have wafer thin chips in them, the size of my finger nail, that can store entire libraries of information. We have no shortage of information or storage… as long as we aren’t trying to store 20,000 photos on our phones.

Information used to be power. Now it seems that information is free. Well, almost free, because we actually pay for information with our attention. The website is free but you’ve got to see the advertising. The podcast is free but you have to listen to commercials. Social media content is free but influencers push products your way, and sell you programs. And you end up not scrolling past an ad because it is designed like the content you normally consume.

We don’t have to buy encyclopedias anymore, information is almost free… The price we pay is our attention.