Either-Or-And

Sometimes we make things an ‘Either/Or’ when it is actually easy to be an ‘And’. This morning was a simple example: one daughter wanted pancakes, the other wanted French Toast. To do both was just a few minutes extra prep.

Two eggs, a bit of milk, some garlic powder and black pepper mixed together and the French toast was prepped. Then quickly make the pancake batter while the large electric frying pan heated up with some oil. Then it doesn’t really matter if I’m flipping pancakes or French toast, and both meals are ready at the same time.

This is just a simple example, but it speaks to the idea that sometimes we don’t have to choose between two options, we can do them both. We can eat healthy and enjoy our food. We can be busy and also take care of our health. We can do a good job at work and find time to spend with family.

We don’t have to create as many dichotomies as we do… we can be more thoughtful and we can think in terms of ‘and’ rather than ‘either/or’.

Milestone

I just checked, this will be the 999th post on this blog. But I had almost 100 posts before I started writing daily, 901 days ago, on July 6th, 2019. So I still have 99 more posts after this one to hit 1,000 Daily-Inks that are actually daily. Still, I feel like I’ve hit a milestone.

The title of this blog came from Stephen Down’s OLDaily, and a former student’s (now defunct) blog, Wandering Ink. Originally, I was writing in a journal and posting a photograph of my writing. It was a novel, but dumb idea. My writing is notoriously messy, and the effort to write something legible was time consuming and unlikely to be sustained. I also started it in China and used a tool, Posterous, or something like that, (also now defunct), to upload my images and posts. And so now all the images I posted are dead and unrecoverable. So some of my older posts look like this:

Who knows, maybe I already wrote a version of my recent post, Human Intersections, in September of 2010, but unless I dig up my old journal buried in a box in my garage, I’ll never know what I wrote in the old post?

Still, yesterday marked the 900th daily post. I haven’t checked month by month to see if I missed any days, but I know that I’ve been very consistent and if I missed any, it would likely be less than 3 posts in two-and-a-half years. I’m not checking. I’m satisfied to call this daily.

Sometimes it’s really tough to get something out. I wrote 5 (now deleted) paragraphs on two separate ideas before I checked my stats for the first time in months and discovered how many posts I am at. Sometimes I start to write something and think I need to put it away as a draft and work on it when I have more time. Sometimes, like today, my writing wasn’t worth keeping. Other times I start to write and don’t pause until I am done.

But writing every day has been an amazing artistic outlet. It has given me the space and time to think creatively, and it has helped me commit to things because I’ve said them ‘out loud’.

And with that post 901 in a row is done. I won’t bother celebrating 1,000, I’ll just keep going and see where this leads me.

Generosity is rewarding

I have a picky rule about Christmas. No lights, no music, no decorations until after my Birthday (November 21st). The rule isn’t about me being selfish about my birthday, it’s about me being selfish about Christmas. When Christmas Day rolls around I want to still be interested in hearing Christmas music, and enjoy the sights and sounds. I find the joy fades by Christmas Day if I feel like I’m celebrating for over a month.

Today my wife and I wrapped stocking stuffers, and I could see the thoughtfulness of these tiny gifts my wife bought out kids. It reminded me of how much joy there is in giving, and not just in receiving gifts. In fact, I think there can be more joy in giving than receiving.

I was reminded recently of an employee I hired at Starbucks. The best employee I ever hired, but I had to break a rule to hire him. The policy was every employee is interviewed by two people. The problem was this eager young man could barely speak English and he was so nervous that he did an awful job. But I trusted the customer who recommended him, a high powered lawyer with a ton of integrity, and I saw through this kid’s nervousness. He turned out to be amazing, and everyone on staff loved working with him.

Several months later his visa renewal was denied and he had to leave. It was really sad. He insisted on taking me out to dinner on one of his last nights in Canada as a ‘thank you’. He knew I gave him a break, I answered more than half his interview questions for him. It was obvious how bad it was and I still gave home the job. His work ethic paid off with dividends, but he was still grateful.

He took me to one of the most expensive Japanese restaurants in Vancouver, where we had about 10 or 11 courses. He stuffed me and complained that Canadians don’t eat enough. After dinner he gave me a bunch of gifts including a Gortex, waterproof jacket (I rode my bike to work daily, and my jacket was looking a little worn), a tennis racket, and other items that easily added up to more than his salary for a week. I felt bad accepting it all on top of this expensive meal we just enjoyed.

I really felt bad as the gifts kept coming out… then I saw it… the joy on his face. He was loving the moment. And I started to share his joy more than my guilt.

There can be great joy in giving as well as receiving gifts, and in some instances, the greater joy comes from giving. Enjoy being kind this holiday season!

Spiral into TikTok time

I have a 30 minute timer for TikTok and I am committed to not going past that on work days. It’s crazy how the algorithm works. Before the self-administered time restraint, I could get sucked in for over an hour… Occasionally, on weekends, I still do. And my TikTok is nothing like my daughter’s, we are into completely different things.

What’s scary is how well the algorithm has me figured out. I can watch 20-30 short videos in a row without skipping one. It has completely figured out what I like, and feeds me related and relatable content. If you are a fan of Facebook or Instagram, you’ll notice the same thing.

But I’m someone who watches very little TV, and doesn’t spend much time on social media, and so 30 minutes is like sitting down to watch a single TV show. It’s entertainment for me and I allow myself that break.

But what about our younger generations? What kind of time are they spending sucked into attention algorithms designed to keep them engaged? Designed to keep them watching?

In China, they stop the Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin, from 10pm to 6am, and I’ve heard that they intentionally push educational content when it is on. This may seem draconian, but I’m not sure that letting addictive social media tools run rampant is a good idea. I’m not sure what balance looks like, but I am pretty sure that these tools are a bit too addictive to let them co-parent our kids.

Push

If I’ve learned one thing about myself, when it comes to physical effort, I’m very externally motivated. Working out in my basement alone, I have to go through all kinds of mental gymnastics to get myself to put out a good effort. Working out with a buddy, I can really push myself. It’s not about competition. Many of my workout buddies have been significantly bigger and stronger than me, and I don’t have the body or muscles to match what they do. But having them there with me is the push I need to give my all.

The same is true in sports. I have to be in just the right frame of mind to give my all in a solo sport. However in a team sport I will do all I need to do to, and more, so that I don’t let the team down. It’s not a part of my personality most people see in my current position, but I literally would do whatever it took to win.

But I’m not on a team sport now. My hobby is archery. I don’t have that push in my day to day. So, my challenge now is to find a way to create that push internally. I worked out in a gym this morning, and there were a couple other people in there. They were doing their own thing and not even in positions where they could see me for most of my workout, and yet I gave far more effort than my workouts alone recently. This isn’t the time for me to join a gym, and my best workout time is before I leave for work each morning, so I’m going to be working out solo 95% of the time or more. I need to figure out ways to push myself. I’m open to suggestions. Music helps, but what strategies do you use to pump up your effort when working out alone?

The 65 percent that makes it happen

I’ve been up for almost an hour and a half. On a regular work day, I would have written this post, meditated, and would be at least half-finished my workout. I’m still lying down with my phone in my hand. I barely have time to write this before heading out to archery (which is good because this is another healthy living goal that I have), But dang, this messes my day up. I’ll need to set a timer for tonight or I’ll forget to meditate. And I don’t know if I’ll have time to work out.

Before imbedding these habits into my work days, I used to only work out regularly during the holidays and would always stop my good routines during my ‘busy times’… and I seemed to get busy a lot! Now I know that my morning routine prepares me for a good day, and sets me up for success during my busiest of times. Then a get on holidays and my routines all fall apart.

This no longer works for me. I need to update my thinking and my habits and routines on my breaks. Saying this ‘out loud’ is a first step, but follow through is important. If I’m occasionally going to skip a workout, that’s ok. If I’m going to miss a morning workout and think about trying to make it up all day, that’s annoying and not very restful. I’m not on holidays from my healthy living goals, and I don’t want to be.

Knowing this isn’t half the battle, it’s the first 10% of the battle. Committing to a routine is the next 65% of the battle… that’s the real work. And the last 25%? That’s the effort put into the routine, and that’s allowed to fluctuate. Committing the time and getting there, that’s the work that brings the rewards… and lets me start my day in a positive way, whether I’m working or on holidays.

Holiday message

After sharing our Superintendent’s holiday message attachment, and the link to find the latest district pandemic response, this was my holiday message from the principal that I sent out yesterday:

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Beyond our control:

It’s was a bit hard today to hear that new restrictions are being implemented or re-implemented to deal with the Omicron variant, and that we still seem to be in pandemic rather then endemic times. In the Fall of 2020 I ruled out any recovery for 2021 and started saying, “Things will start to get better in January 2022.” Even in July of this year, as we were dealing with the Delta Variant, I wrote in my daily blog that I was still optimistic. I thought my timeline left room for error, but I was wrong. Still, while things may not be better in January, I hold a lot of optimism about what 2022 holds in store for us. I hope you do too. 

Within our control:

We all need to do our part. The holiday season is a time when families get together, and students connect with friends. We all need to do this with caution and follow the requested guidelines. When we think about the good of the greater community, we all benefit. “Be safe, be smart,” is my new mantra I share with my daughters, and I share it with you now too. Let’s all do our part.

Story time:

I wear two hats as Principal, one for Inquiry Hub and one for Coquitlam Open Learning (COL). My responsibilities for COL dominated my attention for the past couple weeks. While I was running around trying to do too many things at once, one of my teachers reminded me to ‘be present’ when I was trying to do two other things while also carrying on a conversation with the teacher. This was a good reminder for me.

I have a mentor who I was talking to, many years ago, about trying to juggle everything I was dealing with. The metaphor I used was that I keep adding things to the back of my truck, and things were starting to fall off. My mentor said, “Stuff, not people.”

“Pardon?” I asked.

He responded, “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.”

My teacher reminded me of this. I was trying to do many things, and in my effort, I was not attentive to the person, while I was being attentive to the ‘stuff’ I was dealing with.

At this time when we don’t have a lot of control over imposed restrictions, and doing what’s best for our community, we do have control over our own attention. Students and parents alike, when you are having a conversation, put your devices away. Have technology free meals. Play a board game instead of watching TV. Be present with each other… that’s the best gift you can give each other.

Happy holidays to you all… Be safe, be smart,

Dave

Time warp

Have a look at this infographic:

Dinosaurs ruled the earth for 135 million years, and disappeared in a mass extinction event 65 million years ago. Early hominids, the ancestors of early man only showed up 10 million years ago. If you were to draw a timeline from the first dinosaur to today, then the last surviving dinosaurs are closer in time to humans than they are to the first dinosaurs.

I don’t know why I grew up assuming that humans and dinosaurs co-existed long ago, but give me a break… I was only 55-60 million years off! Maybe it was drawings of humans and wooly mammoths? Maybe it was cartoons? But it’s a real time warp when you think about how long dinosaurs ruled the earth, and how short of a time humans have existed.

It’s even weirder to think of the time it took from the first steam engine to the time when our industrial lives started to threaten the well-being of our planet. Is this what intelligence life forms do? We’ve just been looking at time in millions of years, but the first steam engine was built just over 400 years ago.

Humans have been on this planet for such a short time, yet we place so much attention on ourselves and our significance, as conscious beings. This one species, on an insignificant planet, in an insignificant solar system, in an insignificant galaxy, at an insignificant time in the existence of the universe.

It’s time we got over ourselves.

We don’t really understand

We don’t really understand exponential growth. It’s too hard to comprehend because when we look at growth, we tend to focus on what we’ve seen already, and project forward, but what has already happened is always less significant in length or size than what is still to come. So when we compare what has happened already to what is still to come, we are not comparing equal things.

Fold a piece of paper in half 6 times. How thick do you think the stack would be? Let’s have some fun and look at the folding paper challenge:

It was an accepted belief that folding a piece of paper in half more than 8 times was impossible. On 27 January 2002, high school student, Britney Gallivan, of Pomona, California, USA, folded a single piece of paper in half 12 times and was the first person to fold a single piece paper in half 9, 10, 11, and 12 times. The tissue paper used was 4,000 ft (1,219 m; 0.75 miles) long. ~ GuinnessWorldRecords.com

So she needed a 4,000 foot, (1,219 metres) long piece of paper to achieve this. It’s easy to look at this image of her folded paper and figure out how big it was at 11 folds and before that 10 folds, by halving the amount once then twice. But what if she were to fold the paper more times? How many more times would this image represent?

This image represents folding the paper just 3 more times… a total of just 15 folds.

At 23 folds this would be about a kilometre high (3,280 feet). At 30 folds, you would be entering space. 42 folds gets you to the moon. The 51st fold would get you to the sun. Beyond that it doesn’t matter because our brains won’t truly appreciate the scale anyway.

So I can see the difference that folding a piece of paper just 6 times (64 pieces of paper high) to 12 times (the first image of Brittany above) looks like, but I really struggle to extrapolate from this that 24 folds would be 2 kilometres high.

So when we look at things like technological advancements, we don’t really see well into the future. When I bought the 16k adapter for my Commodore VIC 20 computer to get me to a whopping 36k of memory, I could not fathom the idea that I’d one day be buying 2 Terabytes of memory to store photos that were 8 megabytes large. And I’ll have an even harder time imagining what kind of data I’ll be storing 10 or 20 years from now.

Watch out Metaverse here we come! What does this mean? It means that in 20 years we’ll look back at the technology we have right now in the same way someone who lived 160 years ago would look at our technology today.

That’s mind blowing!

Space Travel

If you could take a trip to the Space Station, would you go?

If there was a shuttle to an outpost on Mars, is that I trip you would want to take?

Does the idea of weightlessness, and escaping gravity appeal to you?

I wonder if leaving Earth’s atmosphere is something that will be as accessible as traveling to a distant continent in my lifetime? Pay for a ticket, hop on a spacecraft, and spend a luxurious week in zero gravity.

Part of me wonders if I’d enjoy it as much as I think I will, and part of me thinks I’d feel nauseated for most of the trip. But I want to go! I want to experience weightless and see the entire earth from space. I want to do a space walk. I want to put my feet on the moon or on Mars.

I want to holiday off planet. This is a bucket list destination. Who’s with me?