Tag Archives: reflection

Missed opportunities

Here are some missed opportunities in naming things that are absolutely hilarious. TikTok continues to be a 1/2 hour break in my day that is far better than any TV show I can think of.

This silly minute-long video made me think a bit about some bigger missed opportunities. I wish I travelled more when I was younger. I wish that I took up martial arts when my aunts and uncles did. I wish I learned another language. But then there are many things that I can think of that I ended up doing, like moving to China, starting and sticking with water polo, despite sucking at it to start, and more recently, starting archery, because I’ve just always wanted to do it.

Overall, I like to think of myself as someone who grabs at opportunities rather than letting them go by. That hasn’t always been the case… and maybe it still isn’t in some ways… but I think that believing that I’m someone who seizes rather than misses opportunities is a better belief system to have.

Grab that opportunity that you know you’ll miss later, if you miss it now that it’s here in front of you. What are you waiting for?

The same moon

It’s 10:30 pm and I’m sitting in my hot tub. My phone is in a clear waterproof bag and I’m sitting on the edge with my feet in, to end my session. Usually I listen to podcasts or my book while enjoying my hot tub, but today I put Greta Van Fleet’s second album on and looked up at the sky. The moon is out and bright enough to give me a shadow.

It’s nice to see the night sky, stars, and moon since my last several hot tubs were all under rain or heavy clouds. As I stared up at it, it dawned on me that it is very unlikely that I was the only person on earth looking at the moon at that moment. How many of ‘us’ were taking a moment to look at the same moon? It’s a simple question with an impossible to know answer.

We all race through this stark, empty, and insignificant part of a truly vast universe on a tiny planet… together. The next time you look up at the moon ask yourself, “Who else might be looking at the moon right now?” Do this and the world seems smaller, more connected.

Two decades

I’m current listening to a book set in the late 1800’s. The protagonist is a 17 year older girl in a poor neighbourhood in London. Life was tough, dirty, and inconvenient. It made me think of how much things have change since then.

After pondering this for a while I got to thinking about a time much closer to now, 2001. Just two decades ago, back when I had a computer in the back of my classroom, but the tracker ball was missing from the mouse. iTunes began, but no one was using it until the iPod came out later in the year. 2001 was three years before Facebook; Four years before YouTube; 5 years before Twitter; Six years before the iPhone. Paper maps were still the most convenient way to find your way around when driving, and my wife and I shared a cell phone.

This all seems prehistoric now. With changes that have major impacts on our lives happening so quickly, just imagine how different our lives could be two decades from now!

Tech patient rather than savvy

I spent hours today trying to figure out some technology that was new to me. Hours.

Google and YouTube didn’t help. I spent unnecessary money buying an app I didn’t need. I asked for help. I finally got far enough that youtube can help me, but I’m done for the day.

I get stuck trying new things and get single-minded about it. I dig, I try, I fail, I try something different, I fail again. People always ask me for tech help and think I’m tech savvy. I’m not. I’m patient, I’m persistent, I’m stubborn, and I want to know how things work. Sometimes it feels like a gift, today it felt more like a curse.

1,000 more arrows

I’ve been struggling to shoot well with my new compound bow, but yesterday I shot the best round since getting it. I’m still off of my personal best, and I am still a little inconsistent, but I was able to more than double the amount of times I was able to score a full 10 points with a shot. And although I didn’t score as well the second round, I was finding the bullseye more in that round.

Now I’ve started to find a flaw in my execution. I seem to have a lot of movement, beyond the desired movement, just after I trigger the release. This is challenging to figure out, but easier to fix than when you just don’t know what you don’t know. At least I’m at a point where I know it’s my error and not just mysteriously wondering what my bow is doing (because I can’t recognize what it is that I’m doing wrong).

Part of my problem is target panic. That’s when you see that your sight is perfectly lined up with the bullseye and you try to rush the shot. For me, it’s a whole body experience, and I sometimes buckle a bit, with my bow hand not holding strong and my hands come slightly closer together. This is an awful movement in archery, and one I have to work on getting rid of. While it doesn’t happen a lot, I don’t know when it’s coming until I’ve already experienced it.

The cams on a compound bow create a ‘wall’ where you hold the shot where there is a let-off of the weight that’s pulling the string. So my 50lb bow, at full extension, has a 75% let-off and I’m only holding 12.5lbs, while a person with a recurve bow would be holding the full 50lbs. My job is to keep my extension and hold the bow ‘hard’ against the wall, but still be relaxed and not be stiff… Yet, also not be so relaxed that I let myself buckle when I see the bullseye lined up.

I know progress will be slow from here, but at least I’m in a good headspace where I can see a path forward. I’m going to make many more bad shots, but the good shots will be more frequent. I’m finally not just floundering and feeling like I’m not improving. Now I just need to keep shooting. 1,000 more arrows, then 1,000 more after that…

Headspace

Yesterday I spent a good part of the day inside my own head. I don’t know if I’m the only one that experiences this sensation (or rather lack of sensation) or if it’s a quirk of the human condition we all experience? I was able to do my job, and I could interact with others, but I felt more like an observer than a participant. I wasn’t fully present.

This isn’t a headspace that I particularly enjoy. It is one where I don’t feel fully engaged in the world. I feel like a visitor in a foreign land, a stranger that vaguely understands my surroundings. I have to work to stay focused on a conversation because my thinking is too loud but not terribly interesting. I feel somewhat disengaged, not just from others but from myself.

Thankfully, the feeling is gone this morning. I don’t like to spend too much time ‘there’. It’s like the world outside my head is a movie that I must watch, but don’t really want to. Reading this now I feel like this should be titled head-case rather than headspace and wonder if someone reading this will recommend psychotherapy… but I also suspect that others will fully understand this experience. Is it really just me, or do others have these moments too?

I imagine for some people this can feel scary. For others, comfortable. For some they can put themselves here, for others they can’t leave. For me it is infrequent, it is not something I can talk my way out of, and it seldom lasts more than a day. It’s just a headspace that I sometimes get into… a mode of observing my own participation in the world around me, yet not feeling present.

Documenting progress through journaling

When I restarted archery last December, I was told by my coach that I should be journaling after each practice. I don’t know why, but I decided that I’d do this using pen and paper. So when I come home from practice, I open my paper notebook and I reflect and journal. Then I take a photo of this and add it to an archery album on my phone, where I also add photos of my score cards.

At Inquiry Hub we are always telling students to document their journey. For some this is a natural thing that they do, for others it’s a challenge. I remember doing a presentation at a local conference, and I took along a few soon-to-be grads from our first year with iHub grads. An educator asked one of the grads, ‘What would you tell your younger self if you were to start back at Inquiry Hub all over again. (A great question.) One of my grads said, without missing a beat. “Oh that’s easy, I’d say, ‘document, document, document’.”

This student and his twin brother had done some amazing inquiries, however they didn’t journal along the way nearly as much as they should have. For example they assembled a very finicky 3D printer, and watched many amateur user videos to trouble shoot, but they didn’t make their own videos when they came up with clever fixes and hacks. Graduating and looking back, they could see what they missed out on.

Students can learn so much from regularly reflecting on both successes and failures. So too can adults. My journal today didn’t look at the frustration I had tuning my new bow. Instead I capitalized on the idea that, while my site and rest are still off, and I’m adjusting as I go, I can still focus on my shot process and do that well.

I know that keeping a learning journal has helped me with my progress as an archer. For some reason, I also feel that literally putting ‘pen to paper’ has helped me anchor in the lessons that a digital journal wouldn’t. And yet, I tend to look at the journal more because it is also available digitally on my phone. All this to say, that as part of a learning process, reflection and journaling are very effective.

Remember that along your learning journey, it’s a good idea to journal, reflect, and document, document, document.

Sharing my posts

I had a meeting yesterday morning where we did small breakout sessions, and we discussed a topic that I’ve talked about a few times here on my Daily-Ink. I wanted to share something I wrote, but decided not to. Then we met a second time but it ended up being me and just one other colleague in the room. We continued the conversation and afterwards, I shared a link to one of the pieces I wrote via email. I got a really positive response, and I’m glad I did share it, but I’m always hesitant to do this.

It’s kind of weird, I write every day, and my post is automatically shared to Twitter, LinkedIn, and my Facebook page, so I obviously don’t mind sharing my work publicly. Yet I always feel like sharing my own writing at work is like shameless self-promotion rather than sharing my thoughts. It feels like I’m trying to show off, or that I’m bragging. Sometimes I’ll use my writing as a reference to what I say, but don’t mention the blog post or share the link.

I think that part of the challenge is that on social media people can choose to read or ignore my posts, and there is no price to pay if someone chooses to ignore the post, However, if I share it directly with someone, well then I’m kind of expecting it to be read. I’m forcing it on someone. This is me just thinking ‘out loud’ about this. I don’t think I’ll change my habits. I think I’ll continue to be overly cautious about sharing my writing in conversations with colleagues.

It’s not that I’m shy, it’s that I’m trying to be respectful. I don’t want to push my writing on people. But sometimes I articulate things better in my writing than I do trying to formulate my thoughts on the spot. I’m a slow processor, a slow thinker, and work through things better through writing than speaking.

That said, I can be quite vocal and no one has ever accused me of not participating in a discussion. Maybe that’s part of issue? I am vocal enough, and spreading or sharing my writing is just ‘over the top’. I’ve spent a few years developing my listening skills, and redirecting my thoughts to what’s being said, rather than what I want to say next. This is a skill that needs to be practiced, especially since I tend to be a lateral thinker that sees connections to things rather than seeing a single track of a conversation. So my brain wants to bounce to related things, off topic things, and maybe something I’ve previously written. But is that thing I wrote truly relevant to the conversation, or is it just relevant to me?

I don’t think I’ll share my posts at work any more than I already do after writing this. I think it’s probably a good thing that I hold back, and I’ll continue to do so.

Writing out loud

For 4 days in a row, I’ve been up before my alarm. This morning it was before 4:30 am. In addition to a bit more writing time, I might also get a bit of email time in… along with my meditation and workout before heading to my school. But also for the 4th day in a row, I started writing a blog post, and more than 1/2 way through decided to erase it and start again. This isn’t a journal that I tuck under my bed, for my eyes only… it’s public. That changes the dynamic of what I want to say.

Monday when I wrote, We are all in the same lifeboat, the original, deleted post was on a similar topic but it was very negative and scathing towards people I call in the post above ‘vaccine hesitant’. It was a full on rant against people who selectively choose the science they want to pay attention to on the fringes. With 7.8 billion people on earth, and social media designed to share attention seeking information, you can find an expert somewhere that disagrees with convention and spreads misinformation. You can find a quotation out of context. You can find data to manipulate in a way that makes it look worse than it is, or use data n a way not intended by the research.

I was listening to a podcast recently that spoke of how much we love the Galileo story. We want to find that story, about the person who sees the world differently than convention… and is right. But while science is dependent on this for progress, these stories are far more infrequent than conventional science being right.

Two days ago I wrote, Thinking Time and Space, and I wasn’t fully honest when I said, “I’m not ready to share the drawing yet, ideas are still being put together. But I can share a couple parts I’ve already written about”. I would have shared the image in progress, or more of it, if it had time to discuss the image, but I wasted too much time writing about an issue that I realized I shouldn’t share. It was some thoughtful writing that took time, but I had no way of masking who I was talking about as I navigated a challenging situation at work… again, some writing that should only be written in a private journal.

Yesterday’s The gift of giving almost didn’t get published, because after writing it I thought, ‘after making the point that giving has a selfish aspect, am I not also emphasizing this in a really negative way by somewhat bragging about giving?‘ But I’d already erased a post I didn’t want to share, and needed to schedule my post and get on with my day.

Today I started to write about a really sensitive topic, and realized that I wasn’t doing it justice. I was trivializing a challenging issue in a way that was disrespectful, to make a point that was completely undermined by my aloofness towards the topic. So I erased it and here I am giving a summary of how hard it is to write publicly sometimes.

I find myself struggling to write openly, while also being respectful to others; Trying to not disclose information about the lives of other people that should stay private; Trying not to rant when something is bothering me; Trying to be personal, but not over sharing.

Some mornings the writing flows, sometimes I stare at the blinking curser and my mind is more blank than when I try to meditate. But the hardest part of writing a daily, public journal is going through phases like this where I actually invest time in writing something, then delete it. For 4 days now, I’ve woken up early only to write and erase something and start over again. I’m not trying to be thoughtful, poignant, meaningful, and/or interesting every single day. I’m trying to be honest. But writing out loud every day can be challenging to do because not everything that comes to mind, and gets written, should be published.

Old home movies

Recently my wife had our home made DVD (digital) tapes converted to MP4 so that we could watch them on our computers. Last night we watched a few. The videos ranged from 15-20 years ago. With my daughters now at 21 and almost 19, it was a wonderful trip down memory lane.

Taking videos like these really dropped off after those early years. I think this was a combination of two things happening. First, the kids were older and in school, which made for changes in the dynamics at home. Next, the iphone came out and suddenly you always had a video camera available. However, as convenient as this was, it also made me less likely to record everyday activities, when I knew that I’d also have my recorder ‘right there with me’ the next time. So, video became reserved for happy birthday wishes, and graduations, and ‘special’ experiences like these.

When I was watching these videos last night, I was so thankful for the experiences I recorded. I was sharing snippets with my parents and siblings, laughing with my family, and making comments about how young my wife and I, and my parents and siblings, looked. Moments in time captured and then re-lived.

With the advent of 3D video and fully developed 360° immersive cameras, I wonder what home movies of the future will look like? Will we be able to put on some immersive goggles and enter a scene from the past? Will we be able to enter a scene, turn our heads and see the expression on our own faces as we take the video? What will the experience of looking at ‘old’ home made videos look like for our grandkids?

It’s exciting to think how the experience could be different in the future, but for now, I’m quite grateful for what we do have. It’s nice to have easier access to our old videos, and we are going to enjoy the fond memories for years to come.