Persistence & The Long Haul

I am thinking about persistence and the long haul. Because of the new year of course. Big plans, don't you know. Plans so big it will take a year to accomplish them. Which has me thinking I probably won't accomplish them at all.

It's not that I have zero faith in myself. No, I believe. I just don't believe I can persist. You're reading an essay I have to draft in one burst because I know that walking away even for ten minutes means I won't come back.

The record on the turntable just ended, but I'm worried if I stop to change it I'll lose the thread of this thing. Let's see what I can do.

Phew, I made it back.

Elizabeth Warren announced her candidacy but I would be thinking about persistence anyway. My persistence (or lack of) isn't in the face of the patriarchy (though I sympathize and try to help). It's about overcoming the habit of giving up when the going gets tough. Were I a cross country runner, coach wouldn't put me in the hurdles for fear of me stopping at the first one then drifting off to read a book.

Projects requiring my persistence include:

• getting a new job
• treating my increasingly demanding bouts with depression
• writing a book I've been thinking and writing about for four years
• buying a Tesla Model 3
• continuing my happy marriage and family
• growing a bigger audience for this blog

I like these projects. They seem good not just for me but for my family and others in the world. Yay. But...

• I'm likely to get rejected for the job to which I recently applied
• depression knows how to defeat my efforts to treat it
• I can't finish a book in one sitting
• I haven't saved the Tesla's down-payment let alone the monthly payments and insurance
• the family has to care for me as much as I care for them
• growing the blog is more challenging without social media

None of these hurdles are so high I can't clear them. It's that I lose the faith as hurdles appears in my path and think maybe I should sit on the couch, turn on a re-run, and eat Doritos. Yeah, that will do it. That's the right decision.

Or maybe I should work on this persistence thing. I kept writing this though I went and changed the record. I came back to this after a quick interruption from my daughter. There's hope for me yet.

I've stuck with my plans through all of two days so far this year. I've even gone out running each of the last six days and felt good doing it. Crazy.

Hurdles are coming but I can probably get over them. In stride. At speed. With room to spare. Even if I hit one, I'll probably be able to keep going and make the next one clean. And if I fall down, I'm told that the possibility exists that I might just get back up and persist in the race.

The gun has sounded and, look at that, I'm off and running.

Return & Redemption In The Schools

Coming back to school after a break isn't fun. My colleagues are unhappy. We act glad to see one another but the general mood is depressed and though misery loves company, company doesn't breed happiness.

Outside the classroom window bare trees sway gently against a blue sky while green grass and frozen leaves stretch across the field. This view in one thing I like about the job but I want to break through and escape. The glass would likely cut me to ribbons. There has to be a better way.

I'm staying in my classroom as much as possible. The hallway, other rooms, and office are minefields of discontent. I hear people rehashing a thing from half an hour ago that was of no real consequence. I can almost smell their hair on fire. It's too early for that. It's always too early for that.

There's a chill on my shoulder from the window and a stirring of warmth on my leg from the space heater whirring behind me. Jim Hall and Pat Metheny are playing on the speakers. I have this document open and am writing. This much is right with my world.

Early today I wrote Morning Pages about managing a long-term problem such as a bad but necessary job. Grin and bear it only works short-term. To do more than survive I need to accept what the job is, confine it to contract hours, take care of myself by writing, reading, and running, laugh at the absurdities, and remember there are things to which I look forward. (Six hours until quitting time. Three school days until the weekend. February break in thirty three school days.) I have to maintain hope and take action.

Andy Dufresne says hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things but I know that hope is nothing without action. I have to make new opportunities, stay out of the nonsense at school, and refuse to light what little hair I have on fire. The way forward involves writing, hoping, and working toward some better place. Probably not Zihuatanejo but maybe even better.

True Innovation

David Sax's "End The Innovation Obsession" in The New York Times is about what I expect from a man who wrote the book The Revenge Of Analog. But here's the thing: Getting the usual from David Sax is awfully damn good.

Sax isn't a Luddite (though that term maligns and misrepresents the true Luddites) but believes innovation does not always have to involve electricity, printed circuits, or the internet. The Revenge Of Analog describes how people are learning that tactile, analog, human tools are often superior to ideas we've been sold by businesses. At the very least, the true revenge of analog is its coexistence with digital.

"End The Innovation Obsession" gets at this idea that new and old, analog and digital, traditional and newly invented tools can and should coexist. We should doubt that newer is always better:

"We are told that innovation is the most important force in our economy, the one thing we must get right or be left behind. But that fear of missing out has led us to foolishly embrace the false trappings of innovation over truly innovative ideas that may be simpler and ultimately more effective."

Not everything that glitters is gold and we shouldn't be magpies attracted to every shiny thing. (Thought it turns out magpies aren't interested in shiny things.)

We are better served by testing new things against tradition. There was a time when Robert Moses' new and whiz-bang ideas about traffic seemed the one true way. Sixty years later I live in a city divided and scarred by Interstate 81.

"It took more than 50 years evidence, accidents and political courage to realize what a colossal mistake the Moses approach was and to begin to undo that with proven ideas in people-centric urban planning that aim to bring cities back to those who live in them."

Still, it's not about rejecting new ideas. I'm typing this on a Chromebook rather than my old manual typewriter or fountain pen to more efficiently get it online. I have however been listening to records on the turntable while composing this. I'm combining the old and new and choosing tools based on the task I've set for myself. I'm practicing what Sax describes as "reflective innovation" rather than rejecting technology as the term Luddite now implies.

"This type of reflective innovation requires courage, because it calls into question the assumption that new is necessarily better" (emphasis mine).

Sax argues for a "human-centric future that reflects where we've been, what we've learned and how we actually want to live." Living this way requires rejecting some technologies because they fail to serve and embracing traditional tools and ways of living that work well. Sometimes that kind of living gets leads to some name-calling and derision.

Me, I'm a proud Luddite even as I finish typing this on my Chromebook and prepare to post it on the internet. I'm not after any kind of revenge and I'm past the innovation obsession. It's all about what works well and feels good. It's about living as human-centric life. Innovation isn't just waiting out there in the future. More and more I'm finding it in the careful sifting of the past.

Happy New Year

There are all sorts of parties and gatherings happening tonight. We're not at any of them. Instead, the four of us — my wife and daughters and I — are in the kitchen making appetizers and other silly foods. The dog eagerly awaits any drops. Our youngest girl is rolling sushi, something she taught herself while school has been out. The older girl is eating bacon-wrapped scallops, something she learned at a very young age. My wife and I are floating in and out of different food prep, dish washing, and occasional kisses and smiles at how lovely this all is.

In school I often have kids write about wants versus needs. This evening fits both of those requirements. I easily get lost in things I want and forget simpler pleasures. I'm not saying that I have to focus on family and love every second, but here at the end of 2018 I am content, happy, thrilled to be spending the evening as a family, just the four of us (and the dog and cats). I'm ending the year in love.

There have been times when I've really forgotten how important my family is. I'm not proud of that but I'm not too ashamed either. Forgetting allowed me to come back. I'm looking around this kitchen at one daughter who will soon go away to college, another daughter full-grown but naive and childlike in the ways I love, and my wife who is cancer-free and healthy, totally in love with her girls, and still somehow the same woman I fell in love with so long ago on the Oswego shore of Lake Ontario.

Mine is a good life. 2018 was a pretty good year. I remember tough times but they were far outweighed by good times, love, and warmth. 2019, for whatever reasons, already feels like a great year before it has begun. It probably has to do with the company I'm keeping on the eve of 2019's beginning.

Happy New Year to all of us. To mess with John Lennon's lyric, let's make it a good one without any fear.