We Are All Homeschooled

Every once in a while I stumble across someone else saying something I could not say better in a million years and I could not ever scratch the surface of it. This time, Seth Godin nails it for me. I love his thoughts in this post, “We Are All Homeschooled”

As both I am both a person struggling with trying to figure out how to better interact with other people. And I am standing on the precipice of fatherhood, this one is too good and too perfect.

Schooled,
–JT
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Lenses

With my swan-dive into health and fitness, I have also made some adjustments to my diet. One of those adjustments has been to limit certain types of foods. My body has reacted in different ways. One of the ways my body has reacted is in dipping in energy and mental attitudes. I have found when my blood sugar level dips I don’t always have the best mental attitude to interact with other people. I get testy, impatient, and relatively unreasonable.

I am not dipping down below healthy levels, I am crashing from a high back down to normal and it is not a pretty sight. I let myself become irrational. My body is transitioning from unhealthy to healthy and from peppy to pure frustration. Another transition my body makes is from hungry to hungry (hungry and angry.)

The common theme is a mental shift. My mentality shifts from ok, to freaking out. I have started catching myself. I have started stepping back from the situation and reminding myself I am not in a terrible spot. I am in my a good spot, my body is reacting poorly to the quick change from a cheap high.

It is amazing how badly it affects me. I am downright embarrassed it affects me as much as it does. The worst moment is the moment when I realize my negative mental attitude is because of my body not because of the issue. The worst moment is when I do not react correctly and instead I act pridefully. I try to lie to myself and say it there is something else wrong or I am upset over the issue not because my body is freaking out.

The pride moments are killer.

I am most embarrassed of the pride moments.

In what ways does your body affect your mental attitude? What are the symptoms of your mind giving in to your body’s negative state? How can you catch yourself from negatively reacting to unrelated things when your body is not doing well? Who can help you catch yourself when your body is freaking out? How does your body’s state color your lens?

Re-coloring,

–JT

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Expectations

Stress is too common in my life. The stress comes from inside me and outside of me. Sometimes the stress is real and other times the stress if fictional. However, stress still affects steals years of my life far too easily. The worst kind of stress is the kind originating from inside of me. The worst kind of stress is the kind of stress spawning from assumptions I have made about a situation or assumptions I have made about other people.

This stress is built on me assuming it is my responsibility to fulfill the unspoken needs and expectations of other people. But there-in lies the problem. The needs are unspoken and assumed. First, I am making assumptions I know other people as well as I know myself. Second, I am guessing what their expectations are for me, which means I am putting myself into shoes I have never walked in and under hats I have never worn. Third I am then trying to fulfill these imaginary expectations and they have never spoken a word about any of it.

Quite literally, I have started telling complete stories and fictions about what they are thinking about me and what they want from me. All they are doing is trying to have a conversation with me.

It is so funny how quickly it went from trying to have a friendly conversation in a group or one on one, to me being solely responsible for keeping the conversation going. The whole thing ends up with me being underneath a pile of imaginary stresses that all started inside my head and ended by shaving years off my life. How different it could have been if I had stopped, took a deep breath, and asked about the expectations? How different could I be to set said the expectations and focus on the value of the person across from me?
What stresses do you have in your life? Where do they originate from? Have you recently asked others about these stresses? What do they think about your stresses?
Relaxed,
–JT
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Fear, Excitement, & 🍗

Recently, my wife and I were able to announce we are pregnant. Woo hoo! We are both definitely excited and looking forward to bringing our baby into the world. Given we are due in November, I am even going to give the baby an emoji in order to have a way to reference the baby. I’ll refer to the baby as 🍗. This seems to make the most sense since our little 🍗 could be born on Thanksgiving day.

However, plenty of life change comes with plenty of reflection. The part of all this I have been reflecting on most is my inability to get excited about this phase of the pregnancy. Last year, we were pregnant and we experienced a miscarriage. Before we miscarried, I was pretty much over the moon with excited for the next phase of our lives. This time, not so much. And my lack of excitement has been weighing on me.

As a matter of fact, I was even a little mad at myself for not being excited or overjoyed yet. I could not figure it out. I thought to myself, “I am having a child and I am not even excited about it. What is wrong with me?” Before I realized a couple things.

One, I am still a little hurt and afraid we will lose this baby too. My fears have mostly subsided given we are approximately eighteen weeks along. There are still some irrational fears in my mind. It hurt quite a bit to go through that pain. I will always look back on the end of last summer and remember the pain we went through. I am not crippled by the pain and it still does not control me. Obviously, I have been able to heal from the pain we felt and we are moving forward with our lives. The pain has left me timid but not destroyed and together, my wife and I have been able to overcome the pain and move on with our lives. The loss has left a mark on me.

Second, I am I do not have to be over the moon just because everyone thinks I should be and I do not have to conform to what everyone thinks is normal. I am who I am and I feel how I feel. I am excited. I am not excited to tell the whole world the ‘big news’ in my life. I am excited for this next phase of life. I never have been excited to share with a bunch of people the big or little things going on in my life. I am relatively private person. I am also a little too independent for my own good and one way it shows up is not wanting to share everything going on in my life, whether good, bad, big, or small.

Realizing these two things has set me free. I am now more excited to be a dad and to bring our little 🍗 into the world. I am still not excited to tell people, but I am getting better at telling people.

I am on a good trajectory and I am excited to see what the next chapter has for me as everything is about to change.

What pain do you carry? What does your pain stop you from doing? What does your pain hold you back from enjoying? How do you do with sharing what is going on in your life? Who do you share what is going on in your life with? Are there people you trust enough and you tell them everything going on with you and they reciprocate? Do you tell too many people? Do you tell not enough people?

Excited,

–JT

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Rotary Phone

In 1844 people started working on inventing the telephone. By 1876, Alexander Graham Bell finished the invention and 1915 brought the first coast-to-coast long-distance telephone call. From this invention, we progressively ended up with more and more telephones. From one in every town until there was one in every household and finally, one in every pocket.

Once upon a time, these things were important. When they rang, they were answered. There was almost never a reason to not answer one. If someone was calling, then it was for a reason and a purpose. There was no spam in a phone call for quite some time. The phone ringing has previously meant so much to our culture. People would answer every phone call coming into their homes. People would never make frivolous calls and telemarketers did not exist. It was an importance ingrained into their minds.

Today, phone calls are not so important. The phone is as much for talking as it is watching videos, sending emails, and checking sports scores. Today, when my phone rings, I am about almost more likely to ignore it than answer it. Most everyone who knows me will text or Facebook message me long before they would ever call. Almost no-one will call me anymore. And I am totally content with not being called.

However, what if I did treat my phone the same way people treated phones in 1915. What if everything happening on my phone was as important as it was in 1915. What if, every time my phone beeped, chimed, or lit up, I had to react immediately? What sort of craziness would I be subjecting myself to!? What sort of craziness would I be subjecting the people around me to!?
The brilliance of the phone evolving is actually lost when I treat it the same way it was treated 101 years ago. 101 years ago no-one would even consider calling you for no reason at all.

Do you give your phone a 2016 job to be done or a 1915 job to be done? Do you treat it as if it was developed today or more than 100 years ago? What are you making more important than you should?

Phoned,

–JT

Moments

Moments. Life is made up of them. I cannot escape living them and they are always followed up by another one. The older I get, the more each one loses significance. Each moment becomes a smaller and smaller percentage of my life. And yet, some of them are far more significant than any other.

I am currently in a phase of life where I have so many significant moments, but in 20 years will I remember them? Will I have them jotted down in my brain in such a way that I can reread them and remember what I am experiencing? Laugh at my naiveté? Celebrate my maturity? Or shake my head at my lack of acknowledgement of what really matters in the situation?

When I run into someone else going through what I am going through, will I be able to remember what I went through? How I felt? What I did to cope with it?

What do you remember? What significant moments do you have the details of stored away for yourself? How can you store away more moments to reflect on later in life?

Momentarily,

–JT

Role Switching

I am not one to dump carte blanche categorization of people as a way to understand the world; but, I did recently have a realization of types of people who are involved in a product. I see these three lenses of understanding myself and others as an opportunity to better understand how I can best work with other people. These roles are dynamic depending on the situation and in some regards, I think we all play one of these roles more often than the other two and any one of these roles can be a full time profession.

The first person I see is the Creator. They are the designer of the product. The person who makes it, has the idea, develops the idea. Maybe even brings the idea to market. The Creator’s goal is to get the product in the hands of someone to use it and love it and the Creator uses it and loves it and they want people to never stop using their product and they will do anything to make it better for the Customer.

The second person I see is the User of the product. The person who interacts with the product’s creation process or back end every day. They are not the Customer. They keep the product working. The systems the product relies on are used by the User every day. The User is the fuel to the system and the maintainer of the processes. The product continues because of the User and the systems they perpetuate. Maybe they are on the manufacturing team of an assembly line or the coding team of an an application. Usually, they have more contact with either the Designer and less contact with the Customer or more contact with the Customer and less contact with the Creator. The User’s goal is to have a fine tuned product and an equally fine tuned process to keep the product going.

Finally, there is the Customer. This is the person who is the perfect target market. They see the product, put their hard earned resources on the line in exchange for taking the product home. They are meant to be with the product and the product is meant for them. They usually have almost no contact with the Designer and they only have contact with the User at best. Truly, the Customer is the target for the product.

The breakdown comes in when the members of this arc forget their place. The Creator, for instance, generally should not be the one to fill in the role of the User. The Creator is meant to have an idea and share an idea with someone who can do it better than they can. They are meant to be the origin point and let the User do their job. The flaw of the Creator is their ideas about how the Customer will use the product. The Creator generally thinks the customer will use the product one way and, generally speaking, the Customer will actually use the in a vastly different manner all together.

The User cannot forget their role either. They cannot start to fill in for the Creator and filter the feedback from the Customer. They need to make sure to always keep the Customer’s best interest first. They too easily get lost in what works best for the User and not what works best for the Customer. When the User starts to get too carried away with designing for themselves, they start to do what is best for them and their needs and the Customer’s are lost in the fray. Ultimately, the Customer will leave the product because the User is so busy maximizing the product’s processes to meet their own needs and not the needs of the Customer.

Finally, The Customer should be the simplest; but too often, the Customer forgets their role and starts to try and act like the Creator and forgets they only have a piece of the picture. When the Customer forgets their role they start trying to tell the User what to do not knowing how their decisions actually alter the process and derail the overall picture the User is orchestrating on their behalf as the Creator is designing and innovating in their product.

Ultimately, we must have all three roles in order to bring a product to our customers. And the products will vary. Maybe you work for a university and your customers are the students, you are the User, and the Designer is the university’s leadership. Or perhaps you love going to a certain restaurant or buying from a certain tech vendor, thus making you the Customer. Your server is then your User, and the cook or owner/menu selector is the creator.

For me, I have begun to realize my role in all of this. I have started remembering my place, not to over extend into other people’s areas but instead encourage them to succeed at what they do well that I might be able to succeed at what I do well.

Which role do you identify most with? Which role do you overextend into the most often? What can you do to help the people you overextend into instead of suffocating them with your overextension?

Extended,

–JT

Resources Ltd.

I was listening to a newer podcast I like and it assesses Apple and their ability to succeed in the face of difficult circumstances. They were assessing numbers and viability and market share and all the products Apple sells.

One of the things they were talking about was how Apple was moving to be more service and subscription based and less product based. In their discussion, they asked a pivotal question about what will people be talking about in twenty years regarding Apple and their sustainability and their success and what made them great. They even asked about Apple’s longevity and whether or not they would still be in business in twenty years and whether or not their current products and services would be necessary.

All of this questioning made me ask and question how a company could still last in twenty years. How could a company sustain itself for so long? What products can we guarantee will be around in twenty years and they are around today?

I came up with a few different products. But only one of those products really hit me in the gut.

Time.

Time is the globally universal product we all have. We spend it. We steal it. We lose. We find it. We try to make it. We never have enough of it. And too often we waste it.

Time is limited and I trade it too easily.

Time is limited and I give it away at the drop of a hat.

What is your time worth? How do you spend your time? In twenty years, do you want to look back and say you spend your time this way? Who can help you stay on track for spending your time better?

Timely,

–JT

Filler

I was sitting on my couch wondering what to do next. So, I picked up my phone and checked twitter…nope, zero tweets behind. Popped open my email, nope, zero new emails. Popped open Clash Royale, nope, nothing to do there.

…nothing I can think of to do.

…nothing truly, needing done.

…but I am always doing something.

Literally, even when I am sitting wondering what to do next, I am doing just that. I am wondering what to do next is doing something. I will always be doing something. How well will I choose what to do? How well will I choose how to spend my time and not allow twitter, email, or Clash to choose what I do?

If I do not choose what I am doing, someone or something else will choose for me. I will be riding along on the rails of someone or something else.

I need to choose how I spend my time not let myself be told by technology or other people. I choose what fills my time and I choose to spend my time doing something that matters and adds value to me. Or I can decide to fill my time with whatever is close at hand.

Just like the food I eat. I eat what is at hand and what is easy. When all I have around me is junk food. I eat junk food. When all I have around me is quick media and cheap entertainment. I spend all my time on quick media and cheap entertainment.

How do you spend your time? When was the last time you assessed how you spend your time? Where are you choosing to spend your time? Where is someone/something else chasing for you? Who will help you use your time better?

Choosing,

–JT

Historical Precedence

There are many things in my life I have done over the years. I have quite the list of things I do and do not do quite simply because at some point in my life I decided this is how I do what I do. Lately, I have grown tired of doing things a certain way because I have always done them this way. I have also grown incredibly impatient with change for the sake of change.

I find myself standing at a crossroads of analyzing how and what I do in order to improve at being who I am. For some of what I do, after a while, I have to start explaining what I do or why I do what I do the way I do it. Most situations in life do not require me to do what I do a certain way. Most situations in life have a normalized way of doing things and those methods work for most people and I do not need to specialize how I do things.

Specializing how I do things can be good when necessary, but if I find myself having to explain myself more and more, then maybe I need to reevaluate how I do what I do.

The most important part is to do what I do the way I do it for a reason.

What do you do in a crazy way? When was the last time you assessed how you do what you do? Do you have reasons for doing what you do the way you do it? Who can help you figure out a better way to do what you do?

Purposefully,

–JT

Circumstantial Disabilities

I was recently helping a friend with a project and noticed how he talked about a circumstance in his life. He talked about his circumstances as if there is no way he could overcome them. He was trapped and saw no way out. I started thinking about my own life and how I can often feel trapped, especially when I am not trapped at all.

I started thinking about opportunity and future. I started to reflect on what I can do to get out of the harder circumstances I have, not to say they are significant on an absolute scale. In the midst of the conversation, the key phrase in my mind, the one thing really sticking with me, was:

My circumstances are not a disability.

I have been found waiting for a miracle at times to cure my circumstances. I knew immediately how insane I was. I shared my realization with my friend and he accepted it and the midst of the conversation and continued the conversation onward.

However, even now the statement sticks with me. My circumstances do not control me. I can change them. I can get out of bad circumstances. My circumstances can also upgrade or degrade based on my decisions.

What circumstances are holding you back? Where do you need to make better decisions to improve your circumstances? Who is going to help you make these better decisions?

Enabled not disabled,

–JT

Milestone

Golly gee, nothing like a milestone to get me to stop and look back. And really, not only glance back, but truly, look back at the sea of sand from the beach parking lot. Look back in the sense of I am sifting the sand looking for thegold shavings I lost.

I have been looking back at how I got to where I am asking questions. Questions about everything. Everything has been up for questioning. Not because everything can go. But because the treasures is not going to make itself apparent. The treasures I have forgotten are not simply missing, they are lost and not easily found.

Everything can be questioned because everything has value and sometimes the only way to get the most value from life’s things is to question all the things.

When I set something off limits to questioning, I tell myself it has no more value. When I stop questioning things, I stop contributing value to them.

How are you contributing value to things in your life? What are you devaluing by not questioning? What can you add value to by questioning?

Questioning,

–JT

Plateaus

I have been thinking a lot about plateaus. A plateau on a graph, not the geological formation. The geological formation, though beautiful at times and impressive in size and shape, does not resonate with me in same way as a plateau on a graph.

The plateau on a graph has an upward slope into it. Then it levels off for a little bit. Then it rises again. However, if my x axis is time and my y axis is growth, then when my growth line pauses and becomes parallel to the x axis, I have plateaued.

Time does not stop because I have stopped growing. Time will drag me along no matter what I do.

The best reference I can find is the Golden Gate Bridge, a giant undertaking and enormous structure. A structure taking from January 1933 to April 1937 to build, four years of someone’s life was spent building it. However, the story of the bridge started in 1916.

A project almost twenty years in the making. After it was built, the instigator of it all. The engineer who fought and struggled to bring it to fruition, he passed away in 1938.

He spent from 1916 to 1933 working to bring the project to life and only enjoyed the bridge for a little over a year before passing away.

When the engineer encountered the opportunity of building the Golden Gate Bridge, it was all he worked on for the rest of his life. He worked on a project of significance, but it was all he did for his life. It marks the San Francisco Bay area, but it also defined his life, and he was barely there to enjoy it.

What are you working to do? When do you step back to enjoy the work you are doing? When do you stop to enjoy life around you? How are you growing with time? Is the work you are doing now the work you want to define the rest of your life? Who is helping you find where to go next?

X & Y,

–JT

Leveling Up

I was listening to a podcast recently and they mentioned in passing about, ‘leveling up.’ The podcast was about growth and advancement and developing. It was really about their specific process, but they made this passing comment about leveling up. I took the passing comment and ran with it.

My brain took the passing comment and my creative juices flowed with the idea to make it an intentional part of growth.

My brain made it a qualifier for growth. Where am I at now? What situation am I in? What does it look like to ‘level up’ past where I am now? How do I start moving my life towards leveling up?

My brain took ‘leveling up’ and made it into a way to get past hurdles. My brain gamified life. I donot love the idea of gamifying life, but I do love the way I am able to look at the future with a more concrete perspective. I am able to see where I am at and how to get to the next level. I can create a clearer plan on what it looks like to be a better version of me. My belongings are tools to augment who I am and make me better. Make my family better. Make my community better. I have to look at the usefulness of things and the job they do rather than pick up the fun stuff I want or desire.

The ‘leveling up’ life has a great potential to grow and mature. I am more inspired to be better when I feel like I am putting milestones into my life to grow past and develop through.

What does leveling up look like for you? What are you keeping around you that is not helping you be better at being you? How can you help someone else level up?

Leveling Up,

–JT

Next Up

My life has been a good journey. Not the best journey by a long shot, but a good journey none the less. I have enjoyed many parts. I think I have done some parts well, some parts not so well, and some parts I would like to go back and redo. However, my story has been a pretty good one.

Though, I am pretty focused on continuing to move forward in my journey, moving on to what comes next. Not so much in the sense of always looking for a job or pushing my career along or my life status to the next logical level. Simply, I get too caught up in the next thing coming. I get too lost in what comes next.

I do not often enough stop to smell the roses so to speak. I do not pay attention to the story I am living. I get focused on the next major event and I get lost in the details of what comes next and annoyed by the thing I am currently doing. So annoyed that I lose sight of the great parts of the path I am traveling.

I too easily get lost in how the next thing is coming and I need to be preparing for it.

The next thing is coming and I need to be ready.

The next thing is coming and the landing point is not yet prepared and I better get ready.

I lose sight of the current point I am in and miss the voyage to get to the next place. When I arrive, I am already planning the next event or destination. I am already planning what comes next.

I too easily get lost in the next bit and I do not often enough enjoy the journey to the last bit. I do not often enough enjoy what has come and gone. I do not easily enough celebrate a good life event.

Too easily I am engulfed by preparing for the destination and I miss how good the scenery is right next to me.

What is the scenery around you? What are the little things you are missing today because you are too focused on the next bit? Are you too focused on your goals?

Stopping to smell the roses,

–JT

Content

Great marketing is great. It shows up in the right spot. It is seen by everyone in the target market and it usually even memorable. The issue with great marketing is, it will be replaced by more great marketing.

The best marketing is great content. Great content causes changes. Great content causes differences in people. Great content makes you better at being you. Great content inspires you to walk out your front door and do something. Great content inspires you to contribute to something much, much, larger than yourself.

Similarly, good ideas work. Good ideas put a smile on your face and make you think about getting how effective the idea can be. Good ideas get some people to do some things sometimes. When you share a good idea, people nod their heads, agree, and will generally agree someone should do something about your idea. A good idea will get people to think about the possibilities and never get out of their recliner. What is the difference between a good idea and a bad idea a la mode with whip cream and a blueberry on top?

A great idea does more than get people out of their recliner.
A great idea inspires people to live beyond their capacity.
A good idea puts a bandage on a paper cut.
A great idea makes the impossible, possible.

Where do you spend your time? How many good ideas have you thrown out lately? What is stopping you from working on great ideas? How can you eliminate/mitigate these road blocks?

Aiming for great,

–JT

New Skills

I like to work hard. It is very rewarding to see what I have been able to create or where I have gotten with hard work. I appreciate other people who work hard. Hard work can take me far in life. I think in some regards, a healthy work ethic can really take anyone far in life.

The issue comes when what I have done to get to where I am at is not going to take me to where I want to go. To get to where I am at has taken hard work and diligence. X tasks and focusing on Y actions. However, Z tasks and N actions are required to succeed where I am at now and move to where I want to go. It is a little mundane to think about how I got to where I am. And process and reprocess the fundamentals of getting to where I am headed. The guiding principles that got me here seem to be the same, but the way they play out from here are most definitely different.

I have heard about the symptoms I need to change, but I have not figured out the core of what needs to change. I do know I can try different things until I find the right thing. Continuing to try new things will help me figure out how to succeed. Feedback from other will help me succeed. Trying to act the same way over and over again and expecting different results will lead to lunacy. Troubleshooting, hard work, and community seem to be the best tools I have at the moment in figuring out how to do get better at what I do.

Where in your life are you trying to figure out something new? Who do you have around you to help you figure out how to do it better? How can you try to succeed in a different way?

Trying,

–JT

Public Opinion

I recently was struck by a very public conversation I have been hearing about. It is is in regards to a million and one details and has strings stretching farther than I could imagine, no matter how creative I think I am.

The most critical part of the conversation to me now is the publicity of it all. Both sides of the coin have always been very private groups. Never divulging too much more than they need. For this conversation, they have been hyper public. They have been leveraging public opinion against each other. Making points. Swaying intermediaries and everyone of course weighs in on the whole thing because everyone has an opinion and everyone else needs to give theirs too.

No one is stopping to ask if this conversation needs to be public. I have been more and more adopting a policy of dealing with things in the moment. This is practically a good policy for me right now, not necessarily permanent. If someone goes off the rails, it is better for me to wave a flag in the moment than wait. I know if I wait, I will never speak up.

I would never bring one of these situations up in a public forum to be discussed in the public court of opinion. I would betray my counterparts in these moments if I take private matters public. Private matters should be private for a reason. Nobody is better when I force a private matter into the public when it obviously belongs private. Personally, I would be immensely hurt if someone made my private matters public, hence I would never do that. What good can come from forcing private matters into the public? Do we really need so many extra opinions in conversations designed for private offices?

How do you deal with things? Do private matters come up too often in public? Do you deal with issues in a timely fashion? Does your reaction scale to the action?

Privately,

–JT

Revolution Eyes

Other peoples’ issues are easy to fix. Formulaic really. I can answer them and help decipher the next step almost too easily. Actually, too easily indeed. I can not, however, deal with my own issues very well.

I generally feel like I look at my own issues and see nothing but haze, fog, and confusion. It is almost as if I am at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and I cannot see my own hand in front of my face. Truly, unnerving to say the least.

I recently unearthed a tool to use for these situations. Detatchment. Not a way to live life. Simply, a way to stop, take a breath, reassess, and then move forward. I have been using this tool more and more. I struggle with getting too connected. I am too willing to get emotionally tied up in the outcome of my work. I will get tied up not only mentally but more dangerously emotionally. I will lock into the outcome as if my life depended on it.

99.99 % of the time…
…my life does not depend on the outcome.

All it takes is a breath. Really, almost a few moments. Count to five then look at my problem again through new eyes. Revolution–eyesed. [#pungroan].

After taking these moments, I am able to comprehend my issue, step away from the problem, assess the facts (as best as I can see them. I am still only one person.) And I can move forward with confidence and clarity as to what will make the best outcome. Most importantly, I can talk myself down off a ledge and not make an angry mistake.

What happens when you get too tied into the outcome of your problems? How can you better engage your problems? How can you better interface with people who are causing you problems?

Detatching,

–JT

Herky–Jerky

I was reflecting on learning to drive the other day and it was so vivid. Sitting in the big white suburban, we had at the time, in the evening after dusk. Slowly getting buckled into the driver seat. Not for the first time. I had buckled myself into this seat plenty of times. However, never before did I have the keys in hand, mother in the passenger seat, and any intention of driving anywhere.

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So I started it up, pressed my foot deep into the brake, shifted into ‘Drive’ and exchanged the brake for gas.

Then immediately SLAMMED back on the brake. Heart pumping. Hands shaking.
And again, exchanged the brake for the gas, was surprised by forward momentum and hopped back on the brake. After a few more exchanges like this I became accustomed to the feeling of initiating acceleration. Within twenty minutes, I felt like a pro.

According to the movies, most everyone’s first driving experience is something like this. Jerky-Jerky where the surprise of initiating acceleration is jolting enough to bring the whole operation to an immediate stop. And eventually, I learned the degrees of separation between where I tilt my foot for 10 miles an hour versus 20 miles an hour versus 30 miles an hour.

How much different is learning anything in life? I try something new, a reaction occurs, and I slam the brakes on the reaction. Examine the reaction, process the net result, assess how to do it again, and try again.

Since then, I have had an innumerable quantity of successful drives with no significant details to be reported. I have also had a few opportunities to interface with local authorities on behalf of my bad driving. And there has been a couple times my experience as a driver has kept me alive as I was dodging pets, wildlife, and navigating icy terrain.

Ultimately, learning to play an instrument or teaching myself any skill worthwhile will have many of these same moments. When I do it right, nothing of note, simply continuing to do it right and hone my skill. When I do it wrong someone will point out my error and I will learn from my mistake and potentially pay a price, preferably not too high. And there will even be a few times my experience will save me from crashing and burning.

Learning something new will have these moments of doing it right and doing it wrong. I will never experience any of successes or failures if I do not get past the herky–jerky of it all. Getting past the first few times will pave the way for a million times more.

Is there something new you are trying to work through? What is the uncomfortable herky–jerky of what you are doing? What is the next step to get through the herky–jerky for you?

Herky–Jerky,

–JT