Posts tagged 082922
Weird optimization

It takes me ninety minutes to write a blog post if I write one in the morning right before I publish.

However, it takes me 45 minutes if it’s the third post I’ve written that day and won’t be published for two weeks.

There are probably a lot of factors involved, and I’m continuing to experiment. But in the meantime, I’m going to do anything I can to not have to write and publish on the same day.

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Inviting chaos

One of the stories my Auntie Anne loves to tell is from the early days when my parents were dating.

She recalls visiting my dad’s apartment in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where everything was perfectly in place and organized.

Here’s the detail that causes the most glee in the sharing of it: My fastidious father had a copy of TV Guide sitting on top of the television in a leather slipcase, open to the current day.

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You get to have it the way that you want it

It was really fun to go back into the classroom this past spring after a couple of years away.

Not only was it a Covid-era triumph to be face to face with a group of young people again, it was an opportunity to flex my leadership chops and see how they were functioning. Could I still create a container that would allow each person in the room to feel safe contributing, be heard, and learn?

And could I do it in such a way that I wasn’t totally drained at the end of the day?

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The pointless hero’s journey

I have trouble writing fiction, and I discovered a key reason when I attempted to do NaNoWriMo: I don’t like to make bad things happen to my characters.

I don’t want to break their hearts. I don’t even want to inconvenience them.

I mean, Dorothy Gale goes to all of that trouble to get to the Wizard of Oz only to discover that she had the power to get back to Kansas the whole time.

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