Tag: Biography

The Joy of Unboxing

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This weekend, I finally unpacked all of our boxes of books.  We were having some people over and thought it would be good to ensure the entire main floor was settled, which meant hauling all the books up from the basement and setting the office up.  I didn’t have the foresight to count them, but I estimate there were 20-30 big boxes of books that have been tucked away since the move last month.

Even before the move, we had boxed up a few bookcases in order to stage the house for sale, so some books have been in boxes and storage for almost three months.  As you can see, we have a lot of books – the natural result of the union of an English major and a Philosophy major.

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Humorously, when I started unpacking, I noticed several extra copies of Harry Potter books floating around.  After collecting them together in one spot and sorting them, I discovered a lot of duplicates.  We had *five* copies of the last two books in the series alone!

One side benefit I noticed in unpacking my books is that seeing the shelves full was making me happier as I went along.  When I started packing the books up a few months back, I noticed that not having my library on hand was affecting me.  I wouldn’t say it made me sad, but not seeing the books while in the office brought the mood down a bit.  It’s a hard feeling to articulate.  On the one hand, I don’t use the books everyday, so it didn’t impact my day-to-day life.  However, having my life and possessions stored away in boxes brought my mood down a bit, and I’ve been feeling it all through the moving experience.  Now that we are unpacking and setting up a new life in the new house, I’ve found myself feeling more optimistic, and my outlook feels a little brighter.

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Now that the books are all out, the only thing left is to start arranging them on the shelves and pick a theme for sorting.  It’s the little things that make me happy.

Stay Awesome,

~Ryan

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Honest Gym Update

Earlier in July, I joined a new gym.  It had been some time since I went to a gym, and indeed I had cancelled my last gym membership due to not attending in months.  I researched some of my local options, and I settled on a non-chain gym to join.

My first workout was July 5th.  The gym has 24-hour access for members, and I wanted to blow off some steam, so I went out to run on the elliptical and do some light weight lifting.

All in all, I like the gym so far.  The layout is different than what I’m used to, but I like the aesthetic and vibe.  You have a decent mix of people using it, from muscle-heads to grandmas, and everyone seems welcome.

However, since July 5th I have not been back to the gym.  Despite wanting to get back into the routine of exercising, I have yet to make any progress towards forming a new habit of going to the gym.

Granted, things have been hectic as we dealt with the fallout from the move, the renovations, wedding planning, etc.  Still, this is not a good excuse and I should be doing better.

I figured this accountability post would be a good thing to share, because it’s going to take some work before I change my behaviour.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Finding My Blog Voice

Last week, I reflected on the WootSuit Youtube channel about finding my voice.  There, the point of the video was reflecting on what kind of voice I wanted for the vlog (tone, topics, purpose, intent, delivery, etc.), but the reflection also covered this blog as well.

When I first set up the blog a few years back, it was intended to be an online public-facing journal of my return to school for paramedicine.  Then, life happened and I decided to indefinitely shelve that idea, but I kept blog running since I found value in it.  The blog forced me to be productive and write regularly every week with the intention of publishing.

Over time, the topics have tended to concentrate of a few areas, mostly related to my professional lives – being a board member and Chair of a non-profit, teaching and learning, personal development, and health/fitness.

Yet, throughout these roughly connected topics, I’ve yet to intentionally create a through line that presents a coherent, meaningful voice.  Thankfully I’m not intentionally trying to market myself through this blog because I don’t have the first clue who my audience is beyond myself.  That’s not all bad, though.  I write for myself and it’s a process of discovery for me.  Writing helps me to organize my thoughts as I attempt to articulate them outside of my head in a way that makes sense for someone else.

A consequence of this approach, though, is a haphazard set of reflections and a bit of a scattered voice.  Sure, it’s my voice, but it’s not one that I’m satisfied with.

As I said in the video, I don’t yet have a good answer.  This post is not intended to be an announcement of some new direction for the site.  It’s just a reflection from a person who still doesn’t really have things figured out (yet).

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

What I’ve Been Reading (As of July 2nd)

Happy long weekend!

I haven’t posted a reading update since back in February, and since I’m away on vacation for the weekend (with my nose hopefully buried in a book), I thought it would be appropriate to list some of the books I have on the go.

HVAC Handbook by Robert Rosaler

This is undoubtedly an odd one on the list.  A few weeks back, our AC unit froze and we decided to replace both of our 30+ year old AC unit and slightly newer furnace in the house.  I am not a handy guy by any stretch of the imagination, but I wanted to learn more about how a house’s HVAC system helps to control the indoor environment.  I renewed my library card and checked this book out.  I have no illusions that I can or should be performing my own repairs, but at least I can appreciate the engineering and design (or sometimes lack of) goes into my house’s climate control.

Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett

This list wouldn’t be complete without a Terry Pratchett book.  This book finally brings us back in touch with the Wizzard Rincewind, whom we last saw in Sourcery and was blown away to another dimension.  Set in the Counterweight Continent and the Agetean Empire, Rincewind, The Luggage, Twoflower, and Cohen reunite and get thrown in the middle of a peasant rebellion against the oppressive rule of the elite and a plot to murder the Emperor.  These are interesting times!

Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin

I quite enjoyed Jocko’s later book, Discipline Equals Freedom, so I thought I’d go back to check out his earlier book  that is largely the reason why he’s known now.  He and Babin are retired Navy SEALS who started a leadership consulting company after they retired from the forces.  The book is a distillation of their experiences and the lessons they learned about leadership that they have brought with them to their civilian careers.  It’s written, in part, as a no nonsense memoir, and I don’t get the impression that they are trying to waive any patriotic flags about being pro-military or pro-combat.

Madison’s Gift by David O. Stewart

Here’s another audiobook I grabbed from the library thanks to the Hoopla service.  While I should probably start reading biographies about figures other than American presidents, this one intrigued me since it’s about James Madison’s partnerships with key people who helped him with his achievements.  Rather than celebrating him as a visionary genius, it plays up the fact that he was fairly ordinary and unimpressive (the book’s description of him is “short, plain, balding, neither soldier nor orator, low on charisma and high on intelligence.”  Something about the description spoke to me, and I thought I’d check it out.

The Perfectionists by Simon Winchester

I blame the fact that I work in the School of Engineering that I decided to check this book out.  The Perfectionists covers the history of precision engineering after the industrial revolution.  While the book covers things relatively chronologically, it’s thematically grouped into various stories related to tolerance in measurements.  I’m only midway through the book, but the history of engineering design is incredible.  The creativity and patience shown by the various craftsmen in areas such as machining by hand, horology, and even lock-picking, is fascinating to learn about, and gives me a greater appreciation for good design (see HVAC above…)

If this was a long weekend for you, I hope you had a great and safe weekend!

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

New House, New Rules

We have recently moved houses (and cities), and we are still settling into our new abode.  It’s a bit of a chaotic time since we moved before our renovations were complete, so we are without a functioning kitchen until early next month, and though most of our washroom in the upstairs level is working, we still have to go downstairs in order to use a functioning sink.  It’s a minor inconvenience but one that we are fine to live with since the move has brought with it many perks – a quieter neighborhood away from university students, a shorter commute to work for my fiancee, and a nice backyard for barbecuing in.

In moving out of a condominium and into a house, it has brought new layers of responsibility.  Whereas before, our job was largely to ensure the unit was cared for (all things considered, a fairly minimal task), owning a house requires a fair amount of stewardship.  It’s a balancing act of routine upkeep, preventative maintenance, problem auditing, and financial mindfulness that is well beyond what was required of us at our last place.  For instance, in our old place, since it was a townhouse that was part of a condominium, all outdoor maintenance was taken care of by the condo’s management company.  This included repairs, lawn care, snow removal, gutter cleaning, building upgrades, etc.  Even things like water was handled though condo fees.

Now, all of those tasks fall to us, and more.  In some cases, a lot more.

Last weekend, our air conditioner froze.  Well, the A/C unit itself didn’t freeze, but the outdoor compressor and our interior coils above the furnace froze.  When we called a technician to come out and take a look at things, we found out several fun surprises – our until was installed in 1982, we were currently running on half the amount of refrigerant that the unit required to operate, that the refrigerant our unit uses is harmful to the environment and will no longer be manufactured by 2020, and that getting a crew out to find the leak and fix everything was going to be very expensive.  It was quite the house warming gift literally speaking, since the temperatures were up over 30 Celsius inside our house when the unit froze.

Did I mention that this happened the day after we moved in?  In fact, we noticed the lack of cool air the morning after I accidentally punched a hole in the wall while trying to hang some privacy curtains in the bedroom.

I am not the most handy of people.

I’m not discouraged by the turn of events, though.  Yes, it was an expensive way to kick off owning a new house, but the reality of it is that it’s a new house with new rules.  Along with the fun that comes with redesigning the house to meet your vision, it also comes with the responsibility of taking care of things to ensure it lasts.  Things will break down, unexpected costs will arise, and if you want the privilege of owning a house, you’re going to have to roll with the punches.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

 

The Gap Between Reading and Doing

 

“For studying courage in textbooks doesn’t make you any more courageous than eating cow meat makes you bovine. By some mysterious mental mechanism, people fail to realize that the principal thing you can learn from a professor is how to be a professor — and the chief thing you can learn from, say, a life coach or inspirational speaker is how to become a life coach or inspirational speaker. So remember that the heroes of history were not classicists and library rats, those people who live vicariously in their texts. They were people of deeds and had to be endowed with the spirit of risk taking.”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of Skin in the Game

One of my big personal shortcomings is my inability to turn knowledge into action.  A few weeks back, I talked about how I tend to read a lot in the area of personal development, to the point of feeling over-saturated in the field.  However, for all the books I’ve read in the past two years in this area, I can’t really point to a lot of areas where I’ve successfully translated what I read into meaningful action.

This isn’t to say that I haven’t personally developed myself since 2016; I would say I’ve come a long way in two years to improving my life and myself.  Yet, in a pure comparison of books to identifiable changes, I can’t really say that a lot of specific changes have been made.  This seems somewhat at odds with the nature of the “advice” these books give, where you can deploy specific hacks, tips, and protocols, and everything will be better.

I don’t have a good explanation for why this is the case.  I feel it goes beyond just being lazy (though I am quite a lazy person).  I think the closest explanation that I can offer is something akin to a lack of confidence meeting decision paralysis.  I lack confidence in my ability to make decisions, so I research and read to see what others have done.  But there comes a point where I have too many options available, and I fail to cross the threshold from knowing to doing.  Rationally, I know that seeking more knowledge does not necessarily mean I’ll be more likely to act (there’s a quip that if knowing more was the solution, no one would need to diet and everyone would be healthy).  The gap between knowledge and action, where the will lies, stubbornly refuses to shrink for me.  This could be my fixed reality, but I’d like to think that I haven’t found the right combination of motivations yet that would bring me to where I want to go (setting aside the problems with the notion that I have to wait around for a muse to motivate me).

This could also be a problem because I have too many things on the go (the old “I’m too busy” rebuke).  With too many balls in the air, I’m worn down with just managing how things are going in the present, and I have little cognitive bandwidth left to steer me in a direction I want to go for the future.  This, too, is a personal shortcoming for me, but I think it’s a separate concern from the action-gap.

Truthfully, I don’t have a meaningful, satisfying way to close off this post.  I don’t have a magic bullet that will fix the problem for me.  I can’t say that I’ve found a solution to the problem, and that this post is building towards a resolution.  It’s an ongoing problem for me, and I hope that by bringing it to the surface, I can at least be aware of the problem and try to work around it until the gap can be plugged.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

 

 

It’s Not Easy Being Chair

I recently took over as Chair of the Board for the non-profit I sit on.  So far, I’ve chaired two meetings and I have to admit I feel out of my element.  I don’t mean that I’m not able to carry out the job – I seem to be doing alright by the feedback I’m receiving from the other board members.

It’s one thing to sit as a board member and evaluate how a meeting is being run, spotting pieces here and there that could be run more efficiently, or structured different, but it’s an entirely different thing to actually run the show.  I think the past Chair did a fantastic job, so when I say there were things that could be more efficient, I don’t mean it as a criticism.  What I mean is, when someone else is putting things into motion, it’s easy to see various areas where something could be done better.  But when you are the one putting things into motion and steering the ship, you spend so much time keeping things going that you don’t have the time or the mental bandwidth to evaluate things in real time and adjust for efficiency.

Before, I would receive the agenda, figure out where I could contribute to the discussion, show up and sit in as part of the group (which sometimes amounted to sitting back and letting others run the discussion).  Now, I make the agenda and set the tone, then I have to be the one to get the discussion rolling.  It falls to me to manage the Board’s caseload, and lead any strategic directions we choose to go.  In time, it’ll also fall to me to work within my mandate from the Board and start the generative process of strengthening the organization and planning for the future.

Based on these last two meetings, it’s going to be a long time before I’m leading in any meaningful sense of the word.  The best way I can describe my performance is managing how much force is getting applied to the flywheel to ensure momentum isn’t lost.  When I reflect on my performance, it feels awkward and a little weak (wishy-washy, as opposed to done with a sense of conviction).

My default state is to excessively talk and look to the body language of others to see if they are receptive to what I’m saying.  If I sense they are not understanding me, I keep talking and hope that if I throw everything at them, they’ll understand what I’m saying.  A friend once likened it to a faucet.  Where I should be dialing things back, I instead open the valve and give them a fire hose of information.   Of course, this is the opposite of what I should be doing as a leader of a group like this.  I should spend less time talking and more time listening to the wisdom of the group.

The good thing is that it’s early in my tenure so there is plenty of time to get more comfortable in the role and learn how to settle into a groove.  Like I said, I’m not doing a bad job.  The rest of the group is fine with how the last two meetings went.  This is merely my critical self-reflection coupled with my desire to do better.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

I (Finally) Cancelled My Gym Membership

I finally got around to cancelling my membership to my gym.

My last visit to the gym was at the end of November last year (I thought it was October, initially, so I wasn’t doing *that* bad…).

I have been away from the gym for so long that the branding and colour scheme has all changed to Crunch Fitness in my absence.  It was strange to walk in and see all the same equipment, but with new branding stickers adorning the equipment and different paint on the walls.  The vibrant reds and blacks have given way to more muted blues and greys – a shadowy ghost of the former company.

I’ve written before about my poor habits with going to the gym, and how much it costs me when I fail to go for months at a time.  I’ve had some successes, but mostly I tend to fall off the wagon.  The longest string of success I’ve had with exercise is using the elliptical at home with the Zombies, Run! app.

The decision to cancel my membership is motivated by three reasons.  First, since we are moving in May, I will be too far away to reasonably commute to the gym (and if I was inconsistent before while living close to the gym, there is almost no chance that anything would change in my habits after the move).

Second, I reviewed my finances and wanted to clean up some unnecessary recurring charges to my credit card.  Things like the gym and my subscription to Crave TV were cancelled since I rarely use them.

Third, with the move to the new house, I’d like to take a crack at exercising more from home.  I’m fairly regular with the elliptical running, and I would like to purchase a few more items to create a bit of a home gym.  While I doubt I’ll have a home gym like Jujimufu on YouTube anytime soon, I can add a few pieces that will allow me to get a reasonably comprehensive workout from home, such as a barbell, bench, and maybe a squat rack.  Stretch goals would include battle ropes, a heavy bag, and kettlebells.

If the home gym fails, there is a commercial gym and a more specialized gym in the town I’m moving to, so I could always sign back up when things settle down.

In the meantime, here’s a salute to World Gym (and Cruch Fitness who took over all the World Gym locations here in town).  I very much liked my experiences at World Gym, and I don’t regret our time together.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

On Indulgence and Order

This past Christmas break, I learned an insight about myself.  In order to feel truly rested during a break, I need two days to myself.  This insight came as a result of the frantic pace that comes with Christmas – cramming to finish as much work as you can before shut-down, travelling all over to visit family, tending to personal projects and end-of-year business, etc.

Two days probably sounds like an overblown indulgence to you, but I realized that in order for me to feel a sense of rest and recharge, I need two consecutive days for my own uses.  With one day, I get a chance to catch up on things – sleep, bills, messages, work, etc.  But two days gives me more freedom to do what I usually need to do – binge.  If I only have one day to myself, I can’t “binge” on whatever it is I want to binge on.  If I were to binge during that one day, I would feel like I’ve just put off doing work for a day, and now everything is piled up further.

But if I have two consecutive days, I get one day to binge, guilt-free, on whatever it is that I want to do (sleep, food, video games, Netflix, YouTube, etc).  I get a chance to get it out of my system, guilt-free.

The second day, then, is my chance to put my life back together.  I can plan out my tasks.  I can take care of personal maintenance tasks.  I clean and de-clutter.  I get a chance to breathe and focus.  It puts life back into order after the mess that comes from indulgence.

It has also made me realize that I’m not balancing things out well in my life if I have to wait for extended vacation breaks to get two consecutive days to myself.  I really should be more mindful of what I schedule for my weekends.

I can only follow this model of binge/purge and order because I am privileged to have a good job and stability in my life.  I recognize that this is not available to everyone, and I appreciate that I’m at a point in my life where it’s something available to me.  For that, I’m thankful.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan