Tag Archives: Coronavirus

Don’t know what you don’t know

I broke my bow a couple weeks ago, and bought a used but better bow than the one I had. This new-to-me bow was used by a top Canadian archer at the World Championships a few years ago… it’s a better bow than I’ll ever need. But I’m having such a hard time with it.

To be clear, it’s not the bow, it’s me. I’m a go cart driver trying to drive a Ferrari. With my old bow, I could tell when I was shooting well and when I struggled. With this bow, I’m shooting and it feels good, but with inconsistent results. Good shots and bad shots feel the same. Worse shots feel like the bow has a mind of its own, torquing in my hand after my shot, the string hitting my arm. I never had this issue with my old bow.

Here’s the challenge, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong? I don’t know what I don’t know. I’ve made all kinds of adjustments and still get inconsistent results. Yesterday while practicing, my buddy who is helping coach me heard me complain (again) that the bow feels too narrow on my hand, and I don’t know why.

He said, ‘Well, you can keep complaining and do the same thing, and get the same results. Or you can stop and try to fix it.’ And he sent me to get cardboard and tape, and try to make the grip wider to see if that helped. Covid makes these conversations a bit tougher, because he’s making suggestions from a distance, where we would normally be shoulder-to-shoulder working this out. So, he shot a couple more rounds while I hacked away at cardboard and wrapped my handle in tape.

It seemed to work, a lot of inconsistencies went away. I started shooting better, and the string stopped hitting my arm after my shot. I came home and wrapped a new handle with better material than cardboard, surrounded by some tennis racket over grip.

I’ll give this a try for a while. It might help considerably. It might be one of many adjustments I make. It might be something that promotes bad habits and I might need to undo it and start all over again. I need to remember that I’ve only had this bow for two weeks, and I’m still a rookie on a huge learning curve. Right now I’m in an experimental phase and need to shoot my next 1,000 arrows before I can consider my feedback valid enough to ‘know’ more. It’s hard to fix things when you don’t know what you don’t know…

Silver lining vs grey cloud

I recently wrote this in a comment on LinkedIn, in response to my post, ‘Cruise ships and education‘:

“…the pandemic also has many thinking about coping and not thriving, being safe and not being creative.”

The pandemic has opened the door to look at things differently, but a year into this, my creative juices have slowed. I think about ideas and I see roadblocks. I tell students they can’t do things because of safety, rather than trying to get to ‘Yes’. I hold off on interesting projects that would add things to other’s plates. I feel my excitement wane when I get together for another online meeting, even if I like the topic of discussion.

I feel that opportunity is meeting fatigue. There is a saying that every grey cloud has a silver lining… but some grey clouds hide that silver lining. Sometimes the rain doesn’t even let you see the clouds. Right now the metaphorical rains are pouring for me. I’m getting work done, but I’m not thriving at work. I’m exercising regularly, but I’m going through the motions, in maintainance mode, rather than pushing myself. I’m writing daily, but I’m not getting lost in the creative act. I’m listening to a book, but not feeling like I’m enjoying it, and bouncing to podcasts that I’d normally love, but find my mind wondering, unfocused as I listen.

On Monday there was great news about how fast the vaccine would be coming to all Canadians that want it. It should have been exciting news, but I find myself doubting the timelines. In all honesty, I don’t know if I’m truly doubtful based on facts, or if I need to be doubtful because it would be painful to see that silver lining ahead of me and then be crushed that it does not come to fruition. I’d rather be pleasantly surprised than devastatingly disappointed.

“…the pandemic also has many thinking about coping and not thriving, being safe and not being creative.”

‘Many’ includes me. I’m seeing a lot of grey and not a lot of silver right now. I need to give myself permission to be in maintenance mode… To focus on caring for myself and those around me, and not beat myself up for coping rather than thriving.

_____

Postscript: I read this (long but well worth reading) article after writing the post above, and it struck a cord with me:

5 Pandemic Mistakes We Keep Repeating

…especially this part:

One thing that I didn’t balance with my thoughts above is that there are so many people who have handled this pandemic poorly, including those leading us, that in a way ‘coping’ is succeeding. We aren’t just fighting the pandemic, we are fighting misinformation, ignorance, and leadership choosing to follow the science only as far as political and economic agendas will allow… all clouds that hide the silver lining (and the hope for it).

My goal is to see some normalcy in early 2022. Anything before that isn’t just silver, it’s gold!

Ordering online is too easy

Sometimes it is just too easy to order things online. The draw to impulse buy something is strong. The incentive to buy in bulk, or more items than you need is exaggerated by a pricing scheme that invites buying excess. I needed golf tees to use to put my paper archery targets onto my target block. 25 tees would last a long time, 50 would last well over 2 years, but I got 75 because it was a great deal. It didn’t cost much more to get the extra 25 tees… but that little bit more was still money that I didn’t need to spend.

I don’t golf, and never visit golfing stores, so I don’t know how much I saved, buying from Amazon rather than from a place that has to pay high fees for retail space? I don’t think about the fact that a store like that is good to have in the community, and worth supporting. I also like the idea of not going to a store that I don’t need to right now. Not walking by people in isles, people who seem less interested in social distancing than they do in getting to the items that they are shopping for.

The appeal to just online shop rather than going to retail stores is strong. When the pandemic ends, I suspect online ordering habits won’t. I wonder what this will do to our local economies? If we will end up with less choices, and more ‘big box’ stores that have the draw of meeting many needs, because niche needs are easier to get online? I wonder if there will be a pricing reset for retail space?

I also wonder how much extra junk we are all buying, because more is better, and bulk items are cheaper? We live in a consumer product driven world and online shopping is an easy way to accumulate a lot of stuff we really don’t need.

Cruise ships and education

It’s going to be a long time before cruise ships are going to reintegrated into people’s holiday schedules. Covid-19 has probably hit their market as hard as any other market. I actually had my first cruise planned through the Mediterranean last summer, but with that cancelled and refunded, I have no plans to ‘do’ a cruse any time soon.

The pandemic has also massively disrupted schools… but I fear that things will be business as usual soon, and kids will be ‘doing’ school just like they used to.

What was learned from remote learning and altered schedules?

What skills became more important?

What skills and competencies should we focus on?

What can students do at school besides going to block after block of classes?

I hope that we don’t just jump back into the way things used to be. Just as many will be cautious about getting on a cruise ship any time soon, we should also be cautious about heading back to school like it was in 2019.

Rewind

A year ago we were heading towards the March break and, at the end of February, had no idea that we would return from the break doing remote learning. I was recovering from breaking my kneecap, and not mentioning Covid-19 or physical distancing yet here on my Daily-Ink. That changed in March.

What a year it has been! Part of me wants to call it a rollercoaster ride, part of me wants to call it a long straight drive on a deserted road through the prairies. No matter how you look at this past year, it is nothing any of us expected a year ago.

Rewind to the end of February 2011, I was a principal in China, and found out I’d be coming back to BC to be vice principal of the adult learning centre. This would lead me to my current position both with Coquitlam Open Learning and co-founding Inquiry Hub.

Rewind to February 2001 and my wife and I had a 1 year old who completely changed our lives. February 2002 our second was born.

Rewind to 1991 and I had not graduated on time from university and went to a different university to finish my degree, choosing this school so that I could play varsity water polo. This brought me back home and I ended up lifeguarding and coaching at a high school. I wouldn’t be a teacher today if I hadn’t made this move and got experience working with and coaching students.

How will I look at February 2021 a decade from now? Will it be a blur in the covid years, or will it be stepping out into a post-covid frontier? Maybe that’s going to be February 2022… I think we will have to keep driving the long prairie road for a while, and look forward to slow and gradual changes in the coming year.

Face-to-face Conferences

While I’m looking forward to our Professional Development Day this coming Friday, I wouldn’t be being honest if I said that I wasn’t missing conferences. I’ll be attending from my laptop, alone in my office. I won’t be going to a large auditorium for a keynote, sitting next to friends, making lunch plans, geeking out in conversations with people I don’t usually get to see, making podcasts between sessions… there is a lot of appeal to engaging with connections beyond the sessions you go to at a conference.

For me, it usually includes meeting ‘digital friends’, people that I know from online/Twitter, whom I’ve never met before face-to-face or whom I have met, but less times than I can count on one hand. These connections invariably make the conference great for me. And not only do I get to meet these wonderful people, they tend to be people that like geeking out with me about what we’ve learned. If I go to a mediocre session, no problem, I can chat with someone who went to a better one. Go to a great session, and now I’ve got someone to share it with out loud, to help me solidify what I’ve learned.

But beyond the learning, there is the human connection. There is the opportunity to be with people I don’t get to see often but I enjoy their company. It’s about being with my tribe. I’ll enjoy the sessions on Friday, but I really look forward to a time in the future when I can once again go to a conference, pick up my swag, and connect with people that make the whole conference experience great!

We are all in the same lifeboat

A few days ago I wrote about the state of limbo we are in, dealing with the coronavirus. I said,

My thoughts: If everything goes well, it could be September before we get close to vaccinating enough of the population to truly ease up on our personal restrictions. More likely, we are looking at January 2022. That’s another year away. I think things will get much better, but the path will be slower than everyone wants.

However I made an assumption that I’m starting to question. More and more I’m realizing that there are going to be too many ‘free riders‘, too many people not taking the vaccine. Too many people believing that the vaccine will cause more issues than the virus. Too many that think the virus isn’t serous enough in their age bracket. Too many people that misunderstand what a vaccine is and what it does.

Without enough of a herd immunity, the virus will continue to spread in a way that means our lifestyle pre-pandemic are not likely to return for years. Virus mutations can and will spread, and each mutation has the potential to spread more easily and/or mutate enough to make vaccines less effective.

It’s like we are all in the same lifeboat and it has tiny little holes in it. Vaccinated people plug the holes, non-vaccinated people don’t think the holes are a serious enough problem. These free riders aren’t doing their job plugging the holes in the boat. And because of that, the boat keeps getting wetter.

I’m shocked every time I hear someone say that they won’t get vaccinated. I know there are ‘anti-Vaxers’ who link vaccines to false claims and negative propaganda, but I can’t say I’ve met or know too many people I’d put in this category. What I am seeing is vaccine hesitant people who think that vaccines for Covid-19 are unreliable, or not significantly tested, or even dangerous. It is this group that scares me. The crackpot anti-vaxer community is a fringe group, too large for my liking but not larger enough to endanger heard immunity from happening… however the vaccine hesitant group is way bigger than I thought, and this group will undermine the ability to reach herd immunity; to keep our lifeboat dry enough not to be concerned.

Only a few days ago I was feeling like I was being pessimistic saying the earliest rerun to ‘normal’ was January 2022, but now I’m thinking that’s terribly optimistic. We could be stuck in this leaky lifeboat for a very long time.

State of Limbo

With news like, ‘January has been the worst month for Covid-19 deaths in the US’, and ‘Getting the vaccine doesn’t mean you can travel’, it is a bit of a reminder that we are not out of the woods yet. Now a year into the pandemic, (we just had the anniversary of the first covid case in Canada), it feels a bit like Groundhog Day, the Bill Murray movie where he wakes up repeatedly on the same day.

Keep wearing a mask and keeping socially distanced… Keep your bubble small, avoid unnecessary public outings and travel… Meet digitally whenever possible. These are things we are used to hearing and doing. And while a year into this pandemic we might be a bit tired of doing these things, it needs to sink in that 2021 could be a whole lot of the same.

My thoughts: If everything goes well, it could be September before we get close to vaccinating enough of the population to truly ease up on our personal restrictions. More likely, we are looking at January 2022. That’s another year away. I think things will get much better, but the path will be slower than everyone wants.

That’s tough to think about when it feels like we’ve been in limbo for such a long time already. It’s tough to keep diligent and be thoughtful about always being careful. But it’s necessary.

Set some personal wellness goals and set aside time to be outside and/or meditate. Make the year ahead one where you improve or enjoy yourself in some way. Take up a hobby or interest that doesn’t require other people. From scrapbooking, to reading fiction, to tinkering around with electronics, to buying a 3D printer, to knitting, to watching award winning movies from the 80’s and 90’s, to flying drones, to running 5 or 10km regularly, there are things you can do that promise to be rewarding or entertaining. While social opportunities are not available, we need not have our minds remain in limbo. 

That said: Be patient. Be smart. Be diligent. Be well. Stay safe.

2 week social media vacation

I’m removing Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram off of my phone until Sunday February 7th, 2021. That’s two weeks of shutting down the social media tools I engage with on some regular daily or weekly level. Staying on my phone will be WhatsApp and Snapchat because they both have family group chats that I engage with, without having other interactions beyond family.

I will continue to blog every day, and these blog posts will auto-post to Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook (to my Pair-Dimes page, not my personal wall, so please follow if FB is where you usually see my blog posts). Feel free to chat with me in my blog comments, but comments on other platforms won’t be seen by me.

There is no specific reason I’m doing this, other than curiosity. I want to see what I miss, and how I will use my time. I think I’ll end up with more audio book and podcast listening time, and I’m hoping that I’ll write and meditate more. Time will tell.

I actually deleted the Apps Sunday night, and I wrote everything above before going to bed. This morning I realized that one thing I’ll need to think about is how I get news? Normally I start my day in Twitter Search looking at the News tab and trending hashtags to get a sense of what’s happening in the world. This has been my strategy for a couple years because television and radio news are not designed to inform as much as to keep you watching and listening. And while I read some print news on my phone, it tends to be focussed on the coronavirus or US politics these days… and it seems to be more commentary and opinion than actual news.

In the end, I won’t have missed much if I’m tuned out of the news for two weeks. And although I’m not always in the room, my wife does watch evening news on tv. I will survive just fine with less news along with my social media vacation.

Interestingly, I came across some Coronavirus news this morning and did a little math with the stats. It seems that while the US has vaccinated 20.5 million people, Canada has only vaccinated 0.817 million. Looking at populations, my math tells me that the US has vaccinated 6% of their population while Canada has only vaccinated 2%. What’s the first thing I thought of doing with that info? Tweeting it… my social media vacation has already started to curtail my behaviour.

I’ll share my vacation experience and reflections on February 7th.

Work-Life Balance

I chatted with a friend recently and he said, “Imagine having a job that you just arrived at on time, left on time at the end of the day, and you didn’t have to think about work while you weren’t at work.”

I have to say that while I might romanticize that work/life balance, I also don’t know too many of those jobs that would appeal to me. Even if I had some kind of existential crisis and quit my job, I don’t think I’d find a new job like that anyway. So my focus for work/life balance is about finding the time to do things that fill my bucket… things that make me appreciate my home and work life; My family and friends; My health and mental well-being.

This isn’t an easy journey to do well. Living through a pandemic doesn’t make it any easier. So, find reasons to be joyful, do activities that are enjoyable, spend time (physically and digitally) with those you love.

I don’t think solitude helps, unless you are somehow enlightened. I don’t think sloth, laziness, or a bag of potato chips helps. Connections do help. Making time for others you care about is something that helps to balance you. Who can you connect with right now?

What are you waiting for?