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.
“…society is obsessed with authenticity and terrified of sincerity.”
For me it’s the perfect vacation photo, but it took 20 minutes to take because that’s how long it took to have a split second of time when the scene doesn’t look over-crowded.
It’s the beauty advice from people with injection enhanced lips and inch long false eyelashes.
It’s the made-to-look-candid moments that are completely contrived.
It’s the ‘I’m an influencer’ entitlement.
It’s the beauty filters that remove wrinkles and age lines while enhancing complexion.
… I could go on. The point being all this happens with an air or attempt to share an authentic moment, a real, ‘this is me’ connection’, or a ‘I’ve got what you want’ attitude, all the while masquerading as sincere.
It’s conveyed as authentic, yet there is pretence, deceit, and/or hypocrisy. It’s the promise that you can have it all: the beauty, the physique, the wealth, the perfect significant other, the happy and fulfilled life.
‘If I can do it, you can too.’
Never mind genetics, forget about privilege, disregard the challenges that are proclaimed as easy or simple to overcome. Leave behind sincerity.
Real authenticity comes with vulnerability. But vulnerability is seen as weakness. So everyone’s afraid of sincerity because theky don’t want their message, and more importantly themselves, to appear vulnerable and weak.
What are we left with?
“…society is obsessed with authenticity and terrified of sincerity.”
What do we see?
False authenticity thinly vailed as sincere but really just an illusion. It’s performative rather than practical. And yet somehow it gains traction, and social media algorithms just feed us more. More vapid messages pretending to be genuine but never sincere enough to be truly authentic.
The bell curve, also known as a normal distribution, is a graph that depicts how values in a dataset are distributed. Most values cluster around the average with fewer values appearing at the extremes… those rare few that do very well or very poorly.
But there is a new curve evolving that matters more, the upside down bell curve where the ones on the extremes are where most of the data points are distributed. In an era of free and openly available information, this is the new learning curve. There is no more average majority, instead there are those that understand and those that do not. Those that participate and those that opt out. Those that engage and those that choose not to. Those that seek to learn and those that disengage.
The resources needed to do well are available. The access to information is there for all who want it. The opportunity to get that information in a format or delivery that makes sense to you is easy to find. The question is, are you willing to put the effort in?
If you learn how you best learn, then access to information is no longer a barrier and you will likely learn very well. You will be with the majority of people on the successful side of the distribution curve. If you decide it’s too hard, or choose not to engage, you will be with the other majority, ignorantly selecting the unsuccessful side of the distribution.
There will be anomalies, those that have learning challenges that are not met and struggle, and those that make no effort yet still find it easy to understand things. There will also be those few that just choose to squeak by, capable of more but neither excelling or struggling. But this is the era of extremes. This is a time when the ‘A’, the ‘Exceeding Expectations’, the ability to excel, is available to most… and yet will only be achieved by the ones who actually choose it.
The mathematical average of the curve might be the same, but the distribution will be starkly divided.
I’ve been feeling ‘off’ on top of issues getting a good night’s sleep, and that has thrown my schedule out of whack. Compounding this, I just joined a gym and the just over 30 minutes commute time to get there and back has thrown off my morning routine. I already get up at 5am and I’m not pushing this to 4:30 to compensate. So, I need to readjust my schedule. On top of this, I’m just 2 days away from winter vacation so my entire routine is about to get upturned anyway.
So what gives way to this? When there is a major disruption in the smooth running of my routines and habits, what breaks? Well, if I can help it… nothing. No, I won’t skip a day writing. No, I’ll never skip 2 days in a row working out. No, I won’t accept that this is a crazy time and I’ll just get back to my schedule when there is time.
That said, I’m probably going to end up moving something to the evenings. I actually have given up a puzzle I do each morning called Strands, and I don’t do Wordle first thing in the morning anymore. But more importantly, I won’t let scheduling be the reason that I don’t get my personal goals done each day.
I’ve said before that it’s the hard days that make you stick to a habit, but it’s also the way you handle your habits when your schedule doesn’t cooperate. When there is a metaphorical disturbance in the force, and things are not as they should be, these are the times habits are made or lost. Because habits are easy when they are neatly stacked into the routine of the day. But take away that routine and suddenly the habits take a lot more effort.
I guess I’ll just have to ‘use the force’… of momentum, of expectation, and of commitment to make sure that while my schedule and routines are totally disrupted, my habits will consistently prevail.
I recently joined a gym and got a few sessions with a trainer. It’s interesting being taught by a guy younger than my daughters, although I have to say he has an impressive amount of knowledge. The first time I met with him he asked me to track my food, and suggested the app MyFitnessPal, which I dutifully downloaded that night and started using it.
I know how important food is in taking care of myself. I saw the impact of supplementing my protein with a morning shake and paying attention to how much protein I take in. The results have been impressive. And yet I have been blissfully unaware of both the nutritional value and portion sizes of my meals until I had to track what I ate in an app.
I had no idea what 2 cups of pasta looked like on a plate? Not a clue what 2oz of pistachios looks like? Not a hint what the calorie or protein amount is in a Booster Juice Açai Avalanche Smoothie?
I was clueless.
Today I finally figured out how to connect my new Garmin watch data to MyFitnessPal. I had some issues with signing into both accounts to get them to speak. And now that I’ve figured it out I can identify if my calorie expenditure is more or less than what I’m burning. Again, something I know very little about.
So I’m actively doing something about my cluelessness, and hopefully heading in an even healthier direction. I have already been on a good path… yet I still have a lot to learn, and I think diet and tracking of my food has been the missing ingredient in my health journey.
I was tempted to start this by sharing a screenshot of my miserable sleep pattern, as recorded by my new watch. However that feels like I’m somehow bragging about how bad it is, and well, that’s not only nothing to brag about, it’s also not necessary. So just know that above everything else, my sleep cycles have been ‘off’ for a couple weeks.
I’m planning on retiring, I’m trying to document the uniqueness of my job(s) for the next principal. I’m dealing with a second family loss in just over 2 years. A close family member had a scary medical issue this summer that is only now coming to a (thankfully positive) end, and a good friend just started chemotherapy.
Cognitive overload is the term that was shared with me by my counsellor. I dismissed it. That’s not my problem, I’m a high functioning individual, I’ll be fine…
What finally gave? My sleep and my health. And now my ego. Admitting that I pushed too hard has been way too hard. I need to be quicker to listen to my counsellor and to my body.
Im happy to offer advice about the importance of taking care of yourself, but the last to take the same advice myself. The easy excuse this time is that I was in cognitive overload, the honest excuse is that I’m stubborn and believe these kinds of things are what others deal with, not me.
I hope sharing this will help someone else listen to their bodies and the people that support them.
I’ll come out of this just fine, the question is, will I learn from this or just let myself get to overload again?
I remember reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and wishing there was an actual Babel fish, a small yellow fish you could put in your ear and instantly translate any language so you heard it in your own. Google Translate is getting pretty close. All you need is a set of headphones and you’ll hear the person speaking to you in another language instantly being translated. It attempts to maintain the speaker’s tone and emphasis, and tries to understand context and even things like idioms, which rarely translate well.
I joke that English is both my first and second language because I struggled so much to be understood when I moved from Barbados to Canada that it felt like I had to relearn to speak English. That said, when I was younger I really wanted to learn another language. Specifically, I wanted to know another language well enough to dream in that language. Now I realize that I’m never going to put the effort in to do this. But at least going forward I can travel abroad with a bit more confidence. Actually it’s not confidence I lacked, it’s comfort. It’s embarrassment that I have gone to another country and have made no effort to understand the people that live there, relying on their knowledge of English.
Of course this won’t help me be understood as much as me understanding others, but I can imagine a time in the not so distant future when this tool will be ubiquitous, and so any time there is a language barrier, both people or groups of people will all be using a translation tool like this.
It’s not perfect, instantaneous translation like the Hitchhiker’s Babel fish, but it’s still a pretty awesome tool that I know is going to come in handy for me.
I sat down to write, put some relaxing music on, and fell asleep before a word was put on the page. I’ve had a lot going on personally and the net effect is that I’m not sleeping well at night. I’m not a great sleeper to begin with and so when I get like this my nights are rough.
Compounding this is the fact that I have a new watch that monitors my sleep. I know this will become a helpful tool eventually, but now it’s more like paralysis by analysis. Seeing my sleep results in the morning only adds to my stress about how crappy my sleep was. Not enough deep sleep, not enough REM, and both too many restless moments as well as too much time awake during the night.
The good news, it’s the weekend and I can take some naps to catch up. I think my body was designed to live in a place with siestas. Power naps revitalize me. I passed out for 20 minutes and feel better. But if I’m honest, I could easily sleep for another 20-30 minutes right now.
I just joined a gym and they had a great promotion on 5 sessions with a personal trainer, so I took advantage of the deal. Today I met my trainer, but not until after I’d already done the Coquitlam Crunch (3x up, once down – 9 kilometres with 3/4 of the time going up hill).
So I wasn’t exactly fresh and ready, but I was excited to get started.
My trainer asked what I wanted to work on. I definitely didn’t want to do legs after the crunch, and my buddy and I did a hard chest and back workout yesterday, so I chose shoulders. He had me doing some exercises with 2.5lb weights, and some face pulls that I’d normally do with 60 or 80lbs, but he had me working with 20lbs doing a technique I’d never tried before.
Here’s the thing, I definitely got a good shoulder workout in. I don’t need to go heavy, I just needed to focus on technique and to work my muscles in a way that I’m really not used to. It was hard to get a full set in with these light weights and both my form and technique definitely faltered as I progressed.
It’s a nice, humbling reminder that it’s better to go light, and do it right, than it is to slap more weight on and have crappy technique. I’d say, ‘lesson learned’, but I know that’s actually just an observation rather than a shift in practice. It’s going to take a few more sessions for me to really understand how to push my body properly with lighter weight rather than muscling through workouts sloppily, with heavier weights.
In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear shares the idea of getting 1% better. What’s fascinating about this is that the evidence of improvement is not something you see early on.
Going to the gym 6 days a week for 2 weeks will not have your muscles bulging out of your previously loose shirt, but 2 years later you might need a new wardrobe. Reading just 10 minutes a day doesn’t make you an avid reader in 2 weeks, but 2 years later you’ve read a couple dozen books.
The idea of working to be just 1% better is fantastic, and it has some great long term benefits, with no downside. However, there is one thing to consider and that is avoiding pitfalls that set you backwards. The simple example is that you are making great progress in the gym then you push too hard and get an injury. Now it takes months of rehab before you can get back to where you were before the injury. That’s a lot of days not getting 1% better. Sometimes these injuries are from pushing too hard, sometimes it’s from a simple movement that your body wasn’t expecting. These are understandable, and not always avoidable.
On the other hand, sometimes these injuries fall in the ‘you better never’ category, fully avoidable and preventable.
You better never pick up a football and throw it to almost your maximum distance without warming up with a dozen or so short passes first.
You better never challenge someone half your age to a race and go from zero to full speed in 12 seconds.
You better never do that Instagram challenge where you contort your body and try to pick something up off the floor with your teeth.
Essentially, you better never do dumb shit that your body used to do easily when you were half your age, letting your ego get ahead of your current abilities.
On a journey to be ever better, you better never choose to do something where 10 seconds of misguided effort sets you back months of consistent progress.
Laws create outlaws. The moment you’ve banned cell phones in schools is the moment you admit that you’d prefer teachers to police student rather than teach them.
15 years ago I was living in China and tried to share some sites where student reporters were reporting on the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, but the Great Filter Wall of China blocked the site. I wrote this, and created a little poster to go with it:
Now here is the thing… I chose to move to a country where a lot of sites get blocked. I can’t imagine what it’s like for teachers in the ‘free world’ that have their own school districts do this to them!
If you are in a school where filters filter learning, here is a little poster for you to hang up in your front entrance:
That was a different time, when people thought they could shield students from social media sites just by filtering them at school. But how far have we really progressed if what we are trying to do now is ban phones? Are we going to ban their smart watches too? Their smart glasses? Are we going to make classrooms electronic free zones? Oh, wait, why don’t we just ban their laptops too?
“Every media outlet and social media feed blames screens for all societal ills.(1) Go ahead, get the screens out of schools just like you did with books, musical instruments, & play. Just keep standardized testing and football! We have entered edtech winter. #discuss (1) real or imagined”
I commented: “Come to Luddite High, where we prepare you for the previous century.”
I find it hard to believe we are here again. Going back to 15 years ago, I wrote, ‘Choose Your Battle‘, where I said,
So which battle will it be? Do we make classrooms a war zone? A battle zone to keep technology out? Or do we make it a learning zone? A place where we close the gap between digital distractions and digital classroom tools?
And shared this image:
Sarcasm aside, the point is that filtering and banning are not the solutions we need to be considering. What we need to teach is that there is a time and a place for tools in schools.
More recently I shared:
“With great responsibility comes great power”… that’s the reverse of the Spiderman quote, “With great power comes great responsibility”, and a teacher, John Sarte at Inquiry Hub, uses this to explain to students that while we give them a lot of time to work independently (a lot of responsibility) that comes with a lot of power.“
This applies to technology in the classroom too. We expect students to be responsible with their technology use. We give them the power to choose when it’s appropriate, we put the power in their hands… but when they show they are not responsible, when the abuse the power, we then become more responsible and take away their power.
When a Grade 9 student is working independently and I walk by them scrolling on their phone, I have a conversation with them about how they could be using their time more effectively and and ask them to put their phone away. When a I see a Grade 11 or 12 doing the same thing, I might or might not have the same conversation. If a kid hands everything in on time, shows pride in all their work, contributes well in class and in groups, and is not using their phone during a lesson or presentation… well then so what if when I walk by they happen to be taking a break? But if it’s a student who still hasn’t figured out how to get good work done on time, I’m definitely having the same conversation I had with the Grade 9.
It’s a whole other story when a class is in session. At that point their needs to be a culture and expectation that the phone is either something being used for learning, as permitted by the teacher, or it’s put away. But to ban it… to remove it from schools… to have to police keeping them out of classrooms altogether, is a luddite style draconian policy that sets us back years if not decades. Schools need to be, “A place where we close the gap between digital distractions and digital classroom tools.” Not a place where we shelter students from tools they will be using everywhere else in their lives.
