Tag Archives: daily-ink

Shifting Paradigms

TLDR: I’m not publishing any more posts on my Pair-a-Dimes blog (where this post is being cross-posted)… I’d be honoured if my Pair-a-Dimes subscribers, (and/or you), subscribed here on Daily Ink. To do so, fill in your email on the subscription form on the right-side column on your computer, or under the comment box on your mobile device.

Well, if it isn’t obvious yet, I will make it clear now. After whimsically naming my blog ‘Pair-a-Dimes for Your Thoughts‘ on a blog service called Elgg, and publishing my first post on March 29th, 2006 (reposted on DavidTruss.com on March 26th, 2008), it is now evident to me that I’ve fully transitioned to my Daily-Ink blog. My last post on Pair-a-Dimes (Choice time for teacher Pro-D) before this one was over a year ago. The one before that (How do we get to ‘YES’?) was written almost two years ago. Meanwhile, on my Daily-Ink I’ve posted every day since July 6th, 2019 (It’s time…). That’s 3 days short of 3 years, or 1,093 daily blog posts.

To put that number in perspective, I had my Pair-a-Dimes blog for 16 years and I only blogged 356 times… less than what I did in my first year blogging daily. That said, Pair-a-Dimes was much longer in format, and much more focussed on education. And although I still write about education and learning on Daily-Ink, I will miss the educational focus of Pair-a-Dimes with the tagline, “Reflections on Education, Technology and Learning“. But committing to blogging daily, and adding more to another blog is too much for me… especially as I think about reviving my podcasts this summer, after an almost 2 year hiatus.

I absolutely loved the community I built around Pair-a-Dimes. This blog is the reason I got to present both for Alan November, and with his team. This blog got me connected to Connected Principals, a now defunct site where principals shared their learning (these are the posts I also shared there). This blog became a learning space for me.


This blog is where I learned to do html, it’s where I learned about wikis, it’s what inspired me to blog with students. It helped me become a better educator and a more reflective leader.

I may come back here to post again, but it’s unlikely. However, because I host both blogs on DavidTruss.com, this blog will stay up for as long as I choose to keep blogging or keep my personal website, so it’s not going anywhere… it’s also not going to be updated.

I realize that I have a significant number of email subscribers to Pair-a-Dimes who might enjoy getting 1-3 minute daily reads via email. If that’s you, I’m truly honoured. On your computer you’ll find the subscribe button on the right hand side column, near the top of this page. If you are on mobile, scroll down below the comment section to find the subscribe button. I’m going to try to transfer over the WordPress subscribers, (whom I don’t have an email address for), but I won’t send an email to the 450 people still subscribed to Pair-a-Dimes on Feedburner after all these years. Instead, I’ll post this and hopefully anyone reading via email will subscribe to Daily-Ink. Whether you choose to transfer or not, I want to thank you as a reader of my Pair-a-Dimes. Whether you read posts dating back to 2006, or if you found one post that made you subscribe, you helped inspire me to keep writing. Thank you for being one of over 370,000 Pair-a-Dimes visitors since I moved to DavidTruss.com, I’m honoured that you joined me, that you took the time to read, comment, inspire me, and contribute to my learning.

The blogging adventures continue here on my Daily-Ink.

Lost for words

The past few days I’ve been really stuck on my daily ink. The ideas are not flowing, and when they do come they feel more like essays than short daily writes. But then I’ve wasted too long staring at the blank page to have time to write long, drawn out ideas. So first my writing feels rushed, and then my whole morning routine does too.

This exercise of writing daily has been very positive for me. It has helped me feel creative. It’s not just an outlet for my writing it’s a drive to produce, to create something every single day.

Every. Single. Day.

Well recently I have felt like I don’t have a lot to share. I feel like the things I want to share infringe on the lives of people close to me that may not want their story shared publicly. And most of all I question myself, wondering why anyone would bother reading my daily dribble?

I remember a while back some people were sharing a daily photo. I love photography and tried a couple times to do ‘A Photo a Day’, but my love for photography made me stop both times within a couple weeks. I would look at these forced photos that I had taken and think to myself, ‘That’s a photo I had to take, not one I wanted to take.’ Then I’d quit.

I feel that way about writing right now… but I don’t want to quit. I don’t want a period of not feeling creative to undermine a habit I’ve built for almost 3 years now. What I’m fighting isn’t just writer’s block, it’s self doubt that I’d have anything else to share after all this time. Mental menopause preventing me from creating any fruitful work.

I’ll push through. I’ll accept that what I’m producing now will not be my best work. I’ll tell myself that the muse will come back. But for now it’s more of a chore than an expression of my passion for writing. I said earlier that I struggle with sharing stories of others that aren’t mine to share, well the story I can tell is my own. And for now, that story is how I’m struggling to write daily. The story to tell is that I’ll muscle through, and while it’s not easy, it’s not a time to give up either.

Healthy living goals reflection 2021

It’s that time of year again when I look back at my healthy living goals sticker chart, and also plan for next year.

This was the post at the end of 2020. And this was for 2019, the year I started this.

2021 in review:

Workouts: 287days or 78.6%

Writing: Daily blog 100%

Meditation: 346 days or 94.8%

Archery: 129 days or 35.3% (Goal was 100 days so actually 129%.)

This was an awesome year for fitness. I am about 6-8 pounds heavier, with a fair bit of increase in size in my upper body and small but noticeable increases in my quads. I feel fit and strong, and I think I only had a couple minor slow downs from back pain, with minimal recovery time. I still need to stretch more, and I still rely a bit too much on deep massage therapy to keep the pain away, but I know that slow, careful strength progress, and more time using my standing desk at work, has significantly reduced the amount of regular pain I’ve had to deal with in my lower back.

Last year I did one more workout in the year… but it was a leap year so I’m going to call it even. I hope to maintain this next year too. Working out slightly more than 3 out of every 4 days for a full year is an excellent goal.

My daily blog has been going strong since July 2019… and while I could probably stop tracking this, I want to keep it as a goal for next year. The chart is a good motivator, and there is nothing wrong with having one of my goals be something that I commit to every single day.

Meditation: I missed 13 days from January to November, and 6 more in December. It has not been a good month for meditation. My goal this year was supposed to be tracking days when I meditate more than once to increase my time. I did this 6 times in January and didn’t continue. It did not become a habit. This year I want to increase the total time by going longer than 10 minutes on weekends, and doing more self-guided meditations mid week, so that mini lessons on the Calm App are not part of my meditation time. This is a more realistic way to take my daily meditation to the next level.

Archery was a new goal this year and I hoped to shoot a total of 100 days. I’m thrilled that I hit 129 days, and my goal next year will be 120.

So, no new goals next year, just a couple adjustments on my current goals. I do plan to write more, but I’m going to calendar that, rather than chart it. So 2022 will be about keeping the good habits going… if you have a few goals you’d like to track, buy yourself a year long calendar and make it happen! (Here are my tips.)

May your 2022 be amazing!

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.

More on writing every day

“When we stop worrying about whether we’ve done it perfectly, we can start working on the process instead. Saturday Night Live doesn’t go on at 11:30pm because it’s ready, It goes on because it’s 11:30. We don’t ship because we are creative, we are creative because we ship. Take what you get, and commit to a process to make it better.” Seth Godin, ‘The Practice’.

Seth has written over 7,000 blog posts on his daily blog, dating back to 2002. One interesting point that he makes is that no matter how many posts he writes, 50% of them are his worst 50%, and not as good as the other half. It’s impossible to do better than that. It’s not about doing great work every day, it’s about ‘shipping’ work every day. It’s about being creative every day, it’s about the process… the practice.

I’ve written pieces that I’ve thought were quite good, and no one will probably ever look back at them. I’ve knocked off a quick post with little thought, and it garnishes comments and positive feedback… and occasionally these two things coincide. But it’s not accolades or attention that matters to me nearly as much as the commitment to write every day. To do the creative work. To wordsmith, to ponder, to question, and to practice the art of writing.

So forgive the typos, the comma splices, the run on sentences. Indulge me when I intentionally break convention. Like this. This is my muse, and I do my best to ship every day. And exactly half of the time, you’ll get better than average work from me.

One dot day

Last Friday was a one sticker day for me. It was my first this year. I have been keeping a sticker chart of daily goals since January 2019. This year I give myself stickers for:

• Meditation (10 min. minimum)

• Exercise (20 min. cardio & a little weights or stretching)

• Writing (this daily blog)

• Archery (with a goal of 100 days this year)

On Friday morning I wrote my post and then got distracted with work emails and didn’t exercise or meditate. I thought I’d come home and make it up. I didn’t. That was the fourth meditation I missed out on in three weeks, whereas I had an over 130 day streak going around this time last year. So I recorded my only one sticker day this year.

Remembering that the best time to start a new streak is right now… I had two four-dot days this weekend, and while I won’t be shooting arrows today, I’ll meditate and exercise right after setting this post to be published this morning. Letting my meditation slide a bit has been a bad habit, and I’ll work on changing that for the rest of the year.

The sticker chart has been life changing for me. It seems simple, but with it I don’t overestimate what I’ve done in a week. It keeps me honest, and it keeps me motivated. No more one dot days for me!

I appreciate the comments

A big thanks to everyone who takes the time to read my daily writing. In the last week I’ve had comment responses to my Daily-Ink on my blog, as well as on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

If I had to choose, I’d love to see these comments on my blog because then they ‘live’ attached to my post, rather than living on a timeline that passes by never to be seen again. That said, I know that if I didn’t automatically post my blog to these platforms, people wouldn’t see them at all, and it’s just easier to respond on the platform you are accustomed to. That’s the nature of social media these days, they are designed to keep you on their platform, watching their advertising, and engaging with them.

This is why when you share an Instagram picture on Twitter, you don’t see the image on Twitter, you see a link to Instagram, but when you share an Instagram picture on Facebook, you see the photo. Instagram and Facebook play nicely together because they are both owned by Facebook. It would be just as easy to have Twitter do this too, but the competing companies both want your attention.

So, I realize that comments will come in on many platforms, and although I said I do have a preference, I am truly grateful to converse/like/interact on any platform where a comment comes up. I’m quite honestly honoured when anyone takes the time to engage with my posts. I know and appreciate that my mom reads them regularly, and beyond that, I am often flattered and amazed that I get responses from local and distant friends alike… from those I know in my daily life, and from those whom I’ve never met face to face but am connected to inline.

I marvel at the idea that anyone can be their own publisher and share ideas across platforms and across the world, and I thank you for taking the time to interact with my journal of public thoughts.

Keeping the IKEA streak alive

It’s not a streak to brag about. Every time I build IKEA furniture I do something wrong. Tonight I put a piece on backwards and taking it off took much longer than putting it on. Added to that, a cheap plastic fastener that holds one of the shelves together broke, and another trip to IKEA will need to happen. Fortunately, I had a lot of good help from my daughter and wife, and it was my wife that caught the mistake before I went to far ahead.

https://twitter.com/datruss/status/1434409327616421889?s=21

That may not be a steak that I’m too proud of, but here I am at midnight making sure that my steak of daily blogging stays in tact… something positive to go to bed thinking about. I hope to break the bad IKEA streak soon, but keep my Daily Ink streak going!

2 years and a week ago

On July 6, 2019 I wrote ‘It’s Time…‘ and said,

“I tried over a decade ago, now I’m going to do it – a short daily blog.

It’s time…”

I don’t think I’ve missed a day since. It hasn’t always been easy. I sometimes don’t think I have anything worth sharing. But sometimes I write something that just feels right. Other times I just jot down a simple thought and it ends up getting more engagement from readers than I’d ever expect. I know I only have a handful of daily readers, but I have quite a few weekly readers that check out a post or two when it lands in their Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook feed.

I am thankful to have people read my writing, but I feel that I do my best writing when I forget my audience. I readily admit that I enjoy getting ‘likes’ and comments, and yet sometimes the simple act of hitting the ‘Publish’ button is all the reward I need.

My blog tag line now reads, “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.”

As I state in the post where I originally wrote this, “The act of writing makes me a better writer. The commitment to this act every single day is itself a reward, making me feel like I’ve accomplished something before I even start my work day.”

Two years of public daily writing is a commitment that I wasn’t sure I could accomplish, and now I wonder how long I will keep going for? For right now, I feel that I have far more reasons to continue than to stop. So this blog will be continued every day until….

Breaking routines

The past few weeks have been challenging for me to maintain my healthy living goals. My exercise has been the bare minimum, I missed a meditation day, and I’ve only shot arrows twice in the last 2 weeks. Daily blogging is the only think I haven’t missed.

I can blame getting busy at the end of the year, but I know I could have done better. What’s worse is that I’m heading into a summer where my routines are going to be completely disrupted. For one thing, I’ll be out of town a lot without my bow, and so I’m going to get very little shooting time. Beyond that, I’ll be without my home gym.

I thrive on routine to keep my healthy living goals, and this summer is going to be a challenge and a test for me. I will need to figure out a routine that works, and stick with it, or I know my healthy living chart will be a disappointment. I have 2 months ahead that I need to show discipline… that I need to plan, such that my fitness is actually a priority and not just an afterthought.

This will especially be a challenge because my motivation has been low, and my workouts have been about maintenance and doing the minimum. I think I’ll have to find a new goal or two to work on. I should state those here because I know making my goals public pushes me, but the goals in my head right now aren’t ones that I think I’m actually ready to make and stick with. If I’m not honest with myself, I’m not ready to declare something I won’t stick to.

So I’m heading forward without a routine and without specific goals. This is not ideal. I’ll hit all 4 targets today, and I’ll do the same tomorrow, but if I don’t set up routines by my first trip at the end of this week, I know I’m going to disappoint myself. That’s not a great feeling, but it’s honest, and so this is a goal I need to set over the next few days. I don’t do well taking care of myself when I get off of my routines, and if I’m not careful, this is going to be a routine-less summer.