Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.
I’ve had a few opportunities to have lunch with, to break bread with, colleagues in the past several weeks. Having a meal together, outside of the usual staffroom with its comfortable banter is a treat. It is a good reminder of the fact that we all have lives outside of this thing called work.
I find that my connections to people can become fixed in a place-based kind of experience, and we all play the roles we are supposed to play… to leave that environment and break bread is an opportunity to find new connections, to be ourselves and not just our roles.
Just to be clear, friendtegrity isn’t a word. I just smashed friend and integrity together. That said, it is likely you read the word and knew what I was going to talk about.
Trevor says, “I don’t think you spot them, I think you feel it… And I think it’s a lot easier for us to spot than you think it is. One of the easiest ones is, can you be yourself? You know, sometimes they’re not a bad friend, they’re a bad friend for you, because you are not revealing yourself to them. And so they are being friends with the idea of you but they are not being friends with you. And then you leave thinking, I don’t feel good. But they don’t even know you, so you can’t blame them for being a bad friend.”
Trevor goes on to say, “I almost think there is no such thing as a bad friend, you are just in a bad friendship… because they could be a good friend to somebody else… this is just a bad friendship for you.”
When I think of my connections to good friends, I see that my own integrity is intact. I feel comfortable enough around them that I am revealing my true self. I am comfortable with them, we can have pauses without having to fill the silence. I can be vulnerable. I can tease and joke without there being concern for harm or defensiveness, and in fact laugh at myself when the teasing is directed at me.
It’s a lot different with a bad friend, a friend with whom I feel I can’t be my true self when I’m with them. That is a friendship that doesn’t have integrity, it doesn’t let me reveal myself and so the bond is only a surface level bond. The chemistry of good friendship goes beyond that.
When you have friendtegrity, that’s really special. You can spend hours together, because you don’t have to fill the time. And equally, you can spend months or even years apart and when you meet again it’s like the time gap disappears. That’s the power of a good friendship. When you have it, you can feel it. And if it’s truly authentic, the feeling isn’t just yours, you and your friend feel it, because you are both revealing your true selves to each other.
I’m back in the loop of struggling to write. It makes me truly appreciate the challenges of authors who do this for a living. Sometimes the words flow and it’s like a poetic dance between thought and expression. Words, and even full ideas almost magically appear on the page, leaving me uncertain of where they came from.
Other times I stare at the blank page, or worse, I avoid the blank page. I seek distraction and call it inspiration. I am looking in all the wrong places. I am literally uninspired.
When I feel like this avoidance is easy. The ‘simple’ work of developing an idea into a piece of writing is not simple, it’s hard. Really hard. Avoiding the effort of thought when the thoughts are not coming becomes a losing game. Maybe I’ll look here for ideas, there for motivation, or over here for… yet another distraction even though I don’t want to call it that. And that’s game over. Time not so well wasted.
Avoiding the blank page is easy, but it’s not productive. How many things do we do that are the equivalent of this avoidance? For some it’s avoidance of a hard conversation, for others it’s a big task, for yet others it’s the minutiae that needs to get done but feels monotonous. Some people find solace that different ‘stuff’ gets done when they procrastinate, but does that really result in a positive experience?
How much time do we spend in a state of busyness rather than dealing with business? Avoiding the real task by doing other things, or worse yet doing something that’s merely a distraction. Some things get automated, habits get ritualized, and the work just gets done. But sometimes the struggle is real. The action avoidance becomes the easy task and the work doesn’t become the work, but actually just getting down to work. Because once you start the work gets done.
I’ve started watching Ancient Apocalypse on Netflix by Graham Hancock. Hancock is a journalist that believes that civilizations have bern around since the last ice age. To some up a few of his premises:
There were full civilizations around 11-12 thousand years ago, at the end of the ice age.
The ice age end ended abruptly with meteor(s) causing a mass melting which caused massive flooding.
That flooding destroyed a lot of the early civilizations that nestled themselves on shorelines and coastal areas.
There was a significant loss of knowledge during this mass flood, a flood which almost all ancient cultures have stories about.
The Sphinx by the Egyptian pyramids are far older than the civilization that built the pyramids close to 5 thousand years ago. So that was not the birth of great civilizations as many believe.
I am not an archeologist, but I think there is something to these claims. The discovery of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, believed to have been built around 11,500 years ago, throws conventional beliefs about early civilizations out of whack. And this isn’t the only ancient sight doing this. More and more evidence suggests that perhaps there were civilizations far older than previously thought possible.
This is science that’s definitely on the fringe, challenging what’s known, and creating very plausible hypothesis. I think in the next 50 years we will consider a very different agreed upon history of civilizations than what we have today.
The challenge is that many people like Graham Hancock tend to be the same people who believe in fringe science. I heard a podcast with Hancock where in addition to ancient civilizations he was also talking about telepathy and moving Egyptian pyramid stones using mind power. The extrapolations seem far fetched and more based on pseudoscience than actual science.
It’s hard to sieve through a lot fringe science to find the science on the fringe… the science that isn’t necessarily conventionally believed, but has significant evidence and merit based on growing bodies of knowledge, as opposed to crazy speculation. This is challenging with people like Graham Hancock, as well as others like Deepak Chopra.
But I think when it comes to ancient civilizations lost to an ancient apocalypse, Hancock really is on to something, and we are going to see this science on the fringe make it into conventional science fairly soon. Our textbooks of tomorrow will tell a very different story about the birth of civilization compared to the history books of today.
The BC, Canada election is over… almost. There are two recounts and enough close battles that we need to wait another week to have the late arriving mail-in votes get counted.
If things don’t change, the New Democratic Party, at 46 electoral seats, will be the minority leaders with 47 seats needed for a majority. The Green Party with their 2 seats will actually have some significant influence to ensure the minority government can actually get things done.
Over 2 million people voted and that represented over 57% of those eligible to vote. There was only a 1% gap between the two leading parties.
As I look to the south, I see another election coming, and another close race with a divided vote in November. Having at least 2 strong parties is a good thing in a democracy, but having both be as strong as they are can create havoc when actually trying to get things done.
This divisiveness we are seeing is baffling to me. It’s like our provinces, states, and countries have split personalities. Dichotomies to an extreme.
But if the mail in votes change things up here in BC, I don’t think we’ll see civil unrest. There might be more recounts, but there will also be a peaceful transfer of power. I don’t see the same thing happening down south. I hope I’m wrong.
“Discipline doesn’t care if you are tired. ‘You’re tired?’
Do it anyway. Right?
Discipline says ‘Oh you don’t feel good.’
Well do it anyway.
Discipline says ‘It’s raining outside and it’s cold. It’s windy.’
Do it anyway.”
It was miserable out today… an ‘atmospheric river’. There is flooding all over the Vancouver Mainland. My buddy Dave and I did our walk anyway. Our 149th Coquitlam Crunch since January 2021.
Excuses are easy. Discipline is doing it anyway… no matter what gets in the way.
Today I’m headed to Surrey to meet with other principals in charge of Provincial Online Learning Schools. My commute is less than an hour, some of my counterparts from around the province had to fly or drive in last night to get to the meeting on time this morning. We will be meeting with a representative from the Ministry of Education in the morning, and also have a full agenda for the rest of the day.
In many ways I have more in common with these colleagues from other school districts than I do with most colleagues in my own district. Being a principal of an online school has very unique demands, policies, and challenges which make our jobs unique. We don’t fit in the box of a traditional school principals, and often when I come across a challenging situation it is these distant colleagues that I turn to for support or clarification.
When we meet as a group it is usually online. But today we connect face-to-face. I can’t express the value it has provided to connect with these principals in person. Over the years I’ve made some valuable friends, and gotten to know some amazing educators thanks to these meetings. I’ve built relationships that would have been much harder to make if we only ever met through a screen.
There is a lot of power in physically getting together for a meeting rather than just doing so online. As a principal of an online school, that’s an important thing to remember and reflect on.
One of my favourite nicknames to give someone is Sunshine. I call both of my daughters Sunshine at different times, and it makes me happy to call them that.
Occasionally I nickname a kid at school Sunshine. It’s usually someone who visits the office regularly and leaves the office staff smiling. Walking in with a happy disposition and leaving a little happiness behind when they go.
One of these kids, who graduated a couple years ago, just connected with me on LinkedIn. Sure she was an amazing student, Valedictorian and Spirit of Inquiry winner (more prestigious in our school than Valedictorian), but that’s not what I remember about her. What I remember is the delightful way she and a friend came to the office daily to spread a little sunshine.
Who spreads sunshine in your life? And are you someone who spreads sunshine?
Another Provincial election is upon us, October 19th, 2024. I voted early, last weekend.
I’ll never get tired of pushing the idea that it is not just a privilege but a civic duty to vote. I wish there were tax fines for not voting. It costs an Australian about $80 to not vote. They get 90% or more people voting. Meanwhile, we’ve been on a decline in BC, which is representative of most of Canada.
I wish people understood how fortunate we are to be able to vote in an open and free election. When I hear things like, “My vote doesn’t matter.” Or, “All the candidates/parties are the same.” Or any other excuse, I feel the speaker is missing the point. We live in a democracy. We have a choice of representation, and we have a duty to cast our vote for the person who represents us.
If we don’t vote, we are literally shrugging off a responsibility we have. We are dismissing a duty placed on us. We don’t do that at work, why do we think it’s ok to do that in our community?
Unsure who to vote for? This non-partisan website, (originally created by a student at our school years ago, and still maintained for elections across Canada), is a great place to start: https://votemate.org
I’ve been working with Joe Truss on a project called ‘Book of Codes’, where we are examining the building blocks of the universe. The main premise is that we live in a Tetraverse, a universe where the smallest possible length in the universe (the Planck length) must be the edge length of a tetrahedron.
I think this is quite insightful. I’ve been thinking about how to use this tool since I shared it by putting my blog posts into it and having it do a Deep Dive on the content. Since then, I’ve read a few things that have questioned just how useful this kind of podcast really is?
Alan Levine says in ‘Wow Us with your AI Generated Podcast…, “In one sample listen, you might be wowed. But over a series, Biff and Buffy sound like a bunch of gushing sycophants, those office butt kissers you want to kick in the pants.”
And in a comment response Aaron Davis mentions my blog’s Deep Dive, “I agree with you Alan about the initial amazement about what is possible, I am not sure how purposeful it is. I listened to David Truss’ podcast he posted and was left thinking about my experience with David Truss’ writing. I imagine that such tools may provide a possible entry way into new content, but I am not sure what is really gained by putting this into an audio format?”
It’s true, I’ve done this a few times and while it can be impressive, I do see that this can get a bit old pretty fast. Except for one thing… I think that if you are asking it for a general summary of light content, you are going to get a light and fluffy Deep Dive response. However, if you want to understand something really challenging or different or dense, this could be a really good way to get a general understanding of tough to understand content. The Deep Dive into the Tetraverse video actually did a really good job of describing new content in a clear way. I found the kaleidoscope metaphor it mentioned an insightful analogy and I think that listening to the audio first would help someone appreciate the video even more.
Like any new and shiny tool, this Deep Dive podcast on Google’s Notebook LM will get a lot of play and then dwindle in use… but that doesn’t make it useless. I think it will find it’s rightful place as a way to take dense material and make it digestible. It will be a great content introduction, an insightful entry into new learning. It won’t become something you go to listen to where you also listen to your favourite podcast episodes. Still, it will have a purpose and you might find yourself going to it, or to a similar tool, when you have too much content to summarize, or if the content is significantly challenging to parse.
