Day: August 15, 2014

1561. The Miracle of Little Gains

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Today I started work in earnest on the backyard. When the wifey and the kids come home they might notice it. They might not. I’m sure someone in the family will say, “Did you even do anything?” and I’ll bite back the momentary frustration, retreating into my zen and thinking that what I did, though a small visible change, is an enormous change. If you look at my 5 yr old and consider the enormity of his transformation from 4.5 to 5, it looks like nothing changed at all, but the change is real. It is evident to those who were around him to help his emotional and mental growth. Likewise, the change in the yard is minor to outside forces, but having initiated it, and seeing my attitude towards the space shift monumentally, I recognize how much work I put into the start of something new and something great.

Activation energy is a miracle. It can be something as minor as finally picking up a weight or walking for twenty minutes or doing your first chore. It can be something epic like finally jumping into the pool and trying to swim or finally picking up the pen to write that novel. The pendulum of success swings on intention. I feel good to have finally harnessed enough intention to pick up the tools and start creating a space I want to spend the best Arizona months in. I have a sick long way to go, but even that excites me. For the first time in a while I recognize that I’m going to grow, and learn, and prosper from the journey, while the destination is merely a direction in which I head.

Some Thoughts:

  1. Respect to Royal Pains for successfully depicting personality through how different doctors deal with medical procedures. The show centers on Hank Lawson, a medical MacGyver, and his HankMed Concierge medical practice. Hank is not the only doctor on staff. He has another doctor working with him named Dr. Sakani. Where Hank is brash and creative, Sakani is, well, Spock. The drama is light and scripting is average but every so often the show puts out a gem.
  2. Adding the interview element to the Novel Writing class. In the past I’ve force fed the classes writers and never actually let them find their own authors to talk to. I believe in the idea of a community of writers, so I will make sure my students access that community by interviewing a published author about their craft and their process.
  3. In addition to authors, students will be thinking deeply about characters. Each student will do a character analysis and character arc analysis on a different character from the same book and come together for a discussion on how they interact and the role that interaction plays in driving the story and their personal story arcs.
  4. I’m a dude, which means I tend to ignore instructions. At the same time I’m constantly telling my children and my students to read the instructions. Again, my hypocrisy goes only so far. I’m going to start reading the instructions. Maybe, one day, I’ll even read those ridiculous statements I agree to every time Apple updates their software. Last day of football tryouts for the middle school flag team and I’m hoping m 9 yr old shows something this time. He’s claiming to be more comfortable, but that has to carry over to action, aggressiveness, and speed.
  5. Johnny Football is grossly overrated. Quit acting like Jesus Shuttlesworth just showed up in a Browns uniform and let this kid learn the pro game.

1560. On Lessons Learned

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There are lessons that can be learned from all that we do. Even something as simple as walking the dog can teach us about responsibility, balance, and respect. When is the leash too long? When is it too short? What should you allow the dog to do to the property of another person? What does it mean for the dog? If all of these lessons can be intuited from a dog walk, what then can be learned from a complex game?

I’m a Minecraft player. I do it in order to explore my creativity and to build really cool stuff. It’s an open-world game. While there is a way to ‘win’ there is really no goal outside of living a life that pleases us. However, through playing I have gleaned valuable life lessons that I hope to pass on to my kids. Here are just a few:

  1. By choosing how we live, we choose our goals in life.
  2. Coal is an abundant but finite resource and needs to be treated as such.
  3. There is a cycle of life and death and that compels us forward.
  4. The seed exists in spite of us.
  5. It is easier to destroy than create.
  6. Violence is an element of nature and cannot be eradicated without also eliminating any understanding of peace.
  7. There is great good that can come out of death and out of evil things.

 

Some Thoughts:

  1. I have not been loyal to my craft and it disappoints me. I tried to convince myself that I was merely allowing myself time to recharge, but it is much more than that. There is an element of fear there—of not having enough to say, of not having the skill to say it, and so on. Every writer faces fear and a self-realization of the level of their skills. The trick is to keep going beyond that, to recognize you can only get better, and stronger through practice, and to capitalize on that.