Fantasy, Florida, Four AM

 School has started, I'm prepping for an event I'm helping to run over the weekend, for which I'm flying out to Orlando Florida on Saturday. At 7 am. Which either means getting up at 4 am, or driving up the night before and getting a hotel and getting up at 5:30 am. I'm not sure it's worth the hotel and extra hassle just to save an hour and a half of sleep, so I'm thinking it will just be an early morning.

There are a lot of moving parts, but I'm getting them done. But then there are classes, which have just started up again. Getting into the swing of that. And more importantly, internship placement. It is very much time to start asking around and find where I'm going to be spending a year doing my internship. I'd like it to be a good fit, so that's an important task.

The weather is great right now, it's really starting to feel like fall. hot during the afternoon and cool at night. I also finally got my tooth fixed so I don't need to floss after every meal because of stuck food. And got my vision checked so I can get new prescription lenses for my sunglasses. And a haircut. A very busy week. We are full on back into the swing of things.

And I'm enjoying listening to good fantasy books while I do chores. Right now it's The Wheel of Time series.

OK, that's my quick update, back to work (though at this point in the evening, more like time to get ready for bed.)

Hope you all are well,

Isaac

Sick Day

I'm sick! And tired. Stayed in bed resting most of the day to try and get it done with before my trip. which is in two days. Sore throat and fatigue. Bit of a runny nose, that's it. Probably a mix of the previous airport travel, being exposed to everyone else, and then some late nights, maybe some sugar.

In any case, trying to get rested and get packed and take care of loose ends, before I've got to get on the road again. Not a great way to go into a vacation, but ah well. I should probably wear a mask everywhere as a courtesy to everyone else.

Dew licking, Hydrangea sniffing, Internship searching

 Just a Quicky:

I've got a squirrel at my sit spot that likes to lick the morning dew off one specific pot. It's very cute, and I just saw him doing it for the second time today.

Also, the Hydrangeas are blooming now and it's so pretty, they are so full, it's almost like poofy clouds. I imagine a bed made out of them, soft and fluffy and smelling of flowers.

I'm leaving so soon for my next trip, after just getting back from my last one. Plus all the stuff I've got to work on, preparing for school starting up again, for the event I'm helping to run on labor day weekend (another trip after this upcoming one), and searching for an internship site.

That's all for today. I'll be seeing some of you soon in Delaware (I think it's Delaware?)

- I Out

Probably Some Zen Monk

Thematically related to previous post: I had a conversation with myself, where I was talking about how frustrating it was that another person wasn't doing something. Then I realized I wasn't doing that thing. So I started doing that. And let go of trying to control the other person. Now I'm happier and in a better place to support that other person. There's a quote about that, probably from a Zen monk or something. It sounds Zen. It's, "Attend your own lectures."

It's very often true. If you find yourself giving advice in your head to someone, double check if that advice isn't better delivered to yourself. Usually it is. Even if it would be useful for someone else, you have no control over what they do with it, but you have supreme control over what YOU do with it.

Also useful for keeping oneself humble. If it's such good advice, or so simple to follow, you do it first.

If someone else is stressed out, and it's stressing you out, and you want them to stop being stressed out so you feel better, you should probably figure out how to deal with our own stuff first. Once you actually have, the other person being stressed out is a moot point, and again, you're in a better position to be of actual help to them.

Leading a Sad Horse to Happy Water

 Moar poasts!

I'm sad. I'm sad because Suzannah is sad. It's interesting how one's happiness an be tied up in another. And then you want to control the other person and make them be happy. But it doesn't work like that. You can't "do" happiness for someone else, it's an internal phenomenon, and trying to force it on someone else is not only ineffective, but generally counter productive, because telling someone you don't like them being unhappy can make them more unhappy. Generally, hard feelings need to be acknowledged, accepted, heard, received, to then release on their own.

And though there are definite actions one can take, to improve one's well being, trying to make someone else take those actions is also often counter productive. Psychological reactance dictates that when you try and force someone to do something, even if they kind of wanted to do it to start with, they will then switch to not wanting to do it, as a reaction to that attempt to coerce, force, control.

This is one of the reasons I'm so interested in Motivational Interviewing, it's about how to talk to people about change, without making it harder for them to change. To in fact make it easier.

There's this concept they call "the righting reflex" where we try and tell people what they should do, or get them to do what we think they should do, that MI specifically says it's best to avoid. It's got a name because it's kind of a knee-jerk reaction most of us have, to other people struggling. Maybe that's what I'm dealing with.

But I know I dislike it when I'm on the receiving end of that righting reflex, so I want to do things a better way. Still figuring out what that looks like though.

I'll leave this post there, as there are plenty more to write to catch up on my backlog.

Oh, I suppose I should take the other side for a bit though, and say sometimes advice is great and useful. But usually best to ask if it's wanted, before giving it. And good to remember there's often a better approach.

Boundary issues, children, chaos, and teacher flashbacks

Waiting for my router to finish updating firmware, so I thought I'd write a little blog post.

My Nephews are in town (wife's side) and it's interesting being with them. I like them and they are generally well behaved and good natured. The young one is still pretty young though, so there is a kind of testing of boundaries. We had a few times recently with a bunch of kids around and there is a certain level of chaos that happens, unless you are constantly on the children. Some of them are pretty good, some a bit more chaotic. But get enough, and at least one is going to create some chaos. That might mean peanut butter smeared absent-mindedly on a wall or some items lost to who-knows-were.

That plus some adult factors gave me a little bit of flash-backs to being a teacher. The subtle tug-of-war I constantly experienced, that was me setting boundaries, and kids pushing them as far as they would go. This is an issue if you are not a great multi-tasker, because it's super easy for a kid to get away with stuff, if you are doing something else and not also paying close attention to them. Especially when they are playing around near the edges of your boundaries, where you need extra awareness and focus. Having gotten out of practice, I feel like I could have handled some of the situations better. So, also flashbacks to some of my feelings of inadequacy as a disciplinarian and classroom manager.

OK, done with the firmware update, time to go to dinner. So time to end this post.

We're having a sleepover with the two older boys this weekend while their parents do a quick trip, so opportunities to play, connect, and maybe do better.

Unsubscribe.

 OK! it is now a week after my classes ended, and I've got enough breathing room to do a blog or two (or three, or six. we'll see how many I can get it.)

It took that long to take care of all the things that had backed up while I focused on the time sensitive big projects. But now I'm back to current. I have an issue with that though. I've got a nice system that keeps things from slipping through the cracks. No buried emails or upcoming events I failed to put into my calendar. It works pretty well for that. not perfect, but especially for really important things, good enough.

But it takes a pretty hefty amount of time to maintain. It's like the equivalent of middle management. Not actually producing anything of import, just trying to facilitate the actual work getting done. And like with middle management, it has the tendency to get bloated and sluggish, because... I don't know why. Maybe it's a "who watches the watchmen?" thing because nobody is making sure the managers are being efficient. Probably there are some competing incentives.

With me in specific, part of it is just the nature of email, to be full of distractions that are so easy to get distracted by. It's kind of like I'm fighting my genetically programmed tendency to be curious. That was great in the bush, where curiosity could lead to useful discoveries, but when there are effectively infinite interesting rabbit trails to go down via the internet, that tendency would lead to never sticking with any one trail long enough to get an actual rabbit.

I could go the "unsubscribe from everything" rout, an Odysseus contract that makes it easier by changing the environment, but I don't know if that will cause missed opportunities I'll regret. I think the certainty of missed opportunities caused by wasting my time on email may be worth it though. Suzannah recently discovered a place in gmail where you can see all your subscriptions and unsubscribe from any that you want, and I think I will do that right now. I'll probably keep a few, but just the bare minimum.

Hopefully this is not another rabbit trail. (I used to call them rabbit holes, but I think rabbit trails is a bit more accurate. They're not taking me to Wonderland. Just... around.