Learning is Change

My girlfriend would read my poetry in high school. I would write it for her in study hall and then show it to her during lunch. It was the quick of a turn around. I would write and she would read. Sometimes the poems would upset her because they were about her, and sometimes they would make her blush for the same reason. This feedback loop was easy as well as easy to understand. I didn’t get hung up on where all of it was going or how everything fit together because I knew that the only person that mattered would read it in a few minutes.

It’s not so easy now.

Now, I look at everything and try to find a common thread. Now, I look for the principles that guide the writing and the thought process. I try and figure out just how the pieces are supposed to fit together. Do they at all?

Am I writing for a businesswoman, an educator, a technology specialist, or just a father trying to cope with newly found breadwinner status? I know that at this point, I should have figured it out. I should be able to say that a given demographic is my target. I should be able to write for that voice. The direction should be assured.

And yet, I find myself looking for balance and not absolute coherence. The words aren’t coming out as a well wrapped thesis with the benefit of organized support. They aren’t the same today as they were 100 days ago or 100 before that. The audience isn’t a girlfriend filled with passion for the immediate gratification of reaction. It’s too important to be only that. It is too fulfilling to try and only pursue one point of view.

The audience is my wife, who lived each day with me.

The audience is my children, who will one day ask these questions too.

The audience is my closest friends, who motivate me with their own writing and send me longform articles about the way in which Mr. Rogers prays.

The audience is the teachers who first asked me to put pen to paper and prove something.

The audience is my parents, who never told me I couldn’t finish something.

The audience is my  entrepreneurial mentors, who made me see every question as an opportunity.

The audience is each person who told me to leave my job and for each person who tried to convince me to stay.

The audience is the geeks who spend their time figuring out how to print from their cell phones or jailbreak their eBook readers.

In short, these audiences are my inspiration. They are the people that have given me purpose. And now that I can see the end, I wonder what the love note will be like to thank them. I know that they are the only thread that has carried through. They are the unspoken rhythm to each sentence.

But, they are not singular. Each one gets some of my voice. The stories are mine, even if they are a bit schizophrenic. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I didn’t know Santa growing up, or more accurately, I didn’t know him the way that other kids my age did. They were all convinced of his reality, and I was never taught to imagine a world in which a single man could deliver millions of presents and consume even more cookies on a single trek throughout the world. I was asked to think about the origination of Christmas and the gifts were always an added bonus to the season.

I did not believe in Santa then. But, I do now.

I believe in him more than I think I ever could have as a child. A child believes because of what they experience. They are skeptical and logical to a fault. They believe what they see, and because they only see the part of the story that supports the existence of Santa that is what they know.

As an adult, I see the whole story. I know where every toy came from and what it took to earn the money to buy that toy. And as I sat there eating the cookies that my children had placed on the fireplace hearth, I knew that I was not Santa. My wife wrapped the last of the presents and we laid them all out by the tree, knowing full well that those labeled from Santa in the “different” wrapping paper had the same telltale taping strategy as the rest of them. We knew that the handwriting didn’t really look that much different and that our children could wake up at any moment and catch us in the act.

None of this lessens my belief.

I believe in Santa because of the way my daughter’s eyes look when she saw her new pajamas right outside her door, representing the closest that Santa ever got to her while she was asleep. I believe because my daughter wanted to leave out syrup for the Elf on the Shelf’s ride home to the north pole now that his work for the year (of watching to see how our children behaved and reporting back nightly) was complete. I believe because I know I am not the one giving those gifts. Some other part of her brain has engaged and told her that something magical has just occurred. Which, it has.

Santa is the best kind of fairy tale: one that is much more fun to tell when you are in on it, when you are helping to create the story every year and add your own traditions. Somewhere in the middle of realizing that the Disney princesses could be seen by a four year old as an empowered female and seeing just how important stories can be for making sense of the world, I found my belief in a figment of our collective imagination.

It isn’t that I want to lie to my kids. It is that I know the truth. I buy the gifts, but the story of Santa takes away all of the need for reciprocation. He is the way in which we can all be altruistic and giving. We just want to see the glowing eyes shining back at us. And if you believe in Santa the way I do, it can happen every year.

Related articles

• The Other Side of the Santa Debate (wired.com)
• Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Lie To Your Kids About Santa (businessinsider.com)

We secretly all want to eat glue. We wall wonder what exactly it will taste like and just how it will react in our bellies. We are envious of those who have tried, even as we put them down for being so unthinkingly gross. We want to believe that they are less intelligent than us who do not eat the paste, but we really want to be in the club. We would, if it were more socially acceptable, take the lids off of those kindergarten glue containers and pour it over our hands. We would let the fake skin dry and peal it off and then lick our fingers clean. We just wish that were possible, that we felt justified in the experiment.

We do not profess this wish. We do not even hint at it. We keep it hidden with our hope for people to break out into song and choreographed dance in the middle of a walking mall. It isn’t one that we have to constantly think about, but when we are presented with an opportunity to taste that milky white liquid, we are tempted to dip our fingers in and touch them to our lips. Perhaps the need is not even a conscious one, but still it is there. And we should give in to it. We should eat the glue when we have a chance.

We shouldn’t do it because of the taboo or because we would like to finally know just how gross it truly is. We should eat glue because of how fleeting our time is to do spectacular and peculiar things.

When I add up the time that I spend retelling the days events to my wife and working on things I have been assigned and playing with my kids and watching incredible television programs like The Wire and the hundreds of other important things I want to fill my life with, there is so little time left for strange instincts and courageous inclinations. If I don’t follow those then they will never be done.

Perhaps, some things should never be done. Perhaps those instincts from our childhood should not be indulged. But still, they persist. They are too pure and precious to give up so easily.They don’t represent what we used to be or what we desired before we knew better. They are the raw curiosity that is bred into each one of us. They are the complete submission to a question that is required to find anything great.

Here is how I know:

My 4 year old daughter said today: “I don’t want to ever die.”

And I replied, “Let’s see what we can do to make sure that it never happens.”

And I mean it, too.

The only way we are ever going to find the cure for cancer or the key to making a copy of our consciousness is by taking the glue bottle in hand and taking a huge and completely satisfying swig.

I went back to the places I grew up and played music for a friend of mine. I played the best songs that I knew with the new chords that I had just found and owned. He called them beautiful and he felt inadiquate. I told him that he wasn’t and asked him to play for me, which he did.

He played me something sad, and then I played him something even sadder. He showed me the stories he had been working on in his head and I showed him the ones that were being tattooed on the printer paper that only ever saw my block letters.

We shared those moments on a dark winter night and we mourned the loss of the freedom we knew in high school. His sister, who knew me longer than just about anyone kept asking me to play more, so I did. I played the song that questioned her god and she got quiet and reflective. We both knew that we had become someone different. That our scars had taken us to different places in the lonely college nights.

I remember how their house always smelled like rain, and how the sadness of their father’s death always hung around the kitchen and the family room. I remember how we would talk about books and movies and music and always end up somewhere more meaningful.

The winter holidays are melancholy if you let them be. And they are giving and hopeful if that is what you feel.

I don’t wish to be back there or to know who those people were back then. I do miss the music, though. I miss staying up late and talking about the things that I have written that only a few other people had heard before.

Every time I go back to the beginning of the year, I feel as though I have to own it. I feel as though I have to commit it to memory as the year that was mine. And every year, I make a promise to be honest and hold up my end of the bargains I commit to.

I kissed my friend’s sister once, too. Just one night, and it was not something we ever talked about again. I went back to my college and she went back to hers and we knew that if we were different people and needed different things that we would be perfect for one another. As it was, though, she was just the one that knew what was in my voice. She knew when I held on to lies and when I let go of the truth.

These special spaces I make now and think through aren’t the warm ones of my youth. They are calculated and spacious. They have enough room for anyone, and they don’t fold in on themselves when given half a chance and disappear.

When I was young, I pursued the cold reality that I knew was somewhere else. Now, I know that everything I care about I can hold in my hands. It wasn’t a mistake to leave the guitar in the corner. I am singing out these songs without the need to fret my fingers.

When what you are watching is more beautiful, dramatic and filled with purpose than your actions would be at this very moment.
When the words being said are more potent and filled with truth than yours can muster tonight.

When you know that if you don’t, you will be missing out on an experience that you can never get back.

Usually I know what to expect when I head into a meeting. Usually I can see what is coming and figure out any problems that are in the offing. I don’t merely assume the best, but I do have an expectation of human to human interaction, with a measure of empathy on all sides.

I screwed up today on this front.

I completely underestimated the amount of animosity that can be creating while troubleshooting technical issues. I was unable to foresee an adversarial relationship between “partners.” I couldn’t fathom the ways in which power could be adopted to make me feel impotent and trivial.

I shouldn’t have been shocked but I was.

I pursued connection and found brick walls. I pursued value and I found shifting responsibility. I sought relationships and I found accusations.

In short, I was taken aback.

The lessons learned:
1. Do not keep sharing your screen when you are professing your lack of understanding or frustration at the way a conversation is going.
2. Do not try to troubleshoot someone else’s firewall.
3. Seek out people that you trust to add sanity to a call that has gone off the rails.
4. Treasure every relationship that doesn’t make you feel like a failure.
5. If you have to remove yourself from a situation to stop from damaging a relationship that is important to others, do so.
6. Feel empowered to say no.
7. Don’t assume that the foot in your mouth is your own. Others can place theirs in there just as easily.
8. Set expectations as early as you can. (i.e., don’t get on a call unless you know who is on the other line.)
9. Have an amazing collaborative experience as soon after a soul sucking one as possible.
10. Be honest about what you are and are not willing to do for others. No one should be able to back you into agreeing to what is against your better judgement.

That’s it. That’s what I learned today.

It used to be that you couldn’t map an idea, that you couldn’t plot its trajectory. It used to be that you couldn’t identify the connectors and the mavens. It was an obscure talent that it took to spot trends. It took skill. Now, it takes a search bar.

There is nothing so easy as finding the topic of the moment. They are all around us. They are the Justin Biebers and the iPads. They are the subtle references that become the stock and trade of entire industries. And you can see it happen. Even if we can’t see it coming, we can sure see how it went.

But it isn’t enough just to be able to spot trends. The points on a line aren’t all that interesting unless you are placing them. The upward slope isn’t special unless you are the one making it happen. And wildfires spread with abandon, but someone is always behind them. There is always an arsonist that reveals the secret weeks or months afterwards. It it always a shock as to how it happened, but nonetheless, the fire did start.

The problem is that I can’t tell someone else to start a fire. I have to instigate and agitate. I have to suggest it to others and see what happens. As it turns out, I never have the right kindling or materials for sustained flames. I can fan them just fine, but it always takes someone else to strike the match and tend the embers.

And after our first fire, none of us are the same. We all have lost eyebrows and we all glowing from staring at what we have done for so long. The stories we tell are the ones of pushing the fire into the right places, creating back burns to drive the flame deeper into the areas that need a cleansing fire.

And the fires start with an @ symbol now. I fan the flames with an RT.

We set up meetups to ensure we all have the best techniques getting it to burn brighter and longer.

We bookmark our good ideas and start putting together arsonist kits for others.

We take pictures and document just how we are getting such a great burn rate.

And we sit back and watch as everything that we have worked for is enveloped in flames.

We watch, knowing that it is all because of us that we see the dancing orange and flickering blues.

We cheer it on as others start setting fires of their own.

(As you may have guessed, this post is purely metaphorical. I am not actually advocating arson or any form of eco-terrorism.)

Every holiday season, I am flabbergasted by the number of commercials that involve surprising a loved one with a car. They put bows on them, reveal them from behind enormous stockings, and often there are blindfolds involved. Each time the surprised husband or wife looks at the car, I get a little sick to my stomach.

It makes me wonder just what kinds of relationships would afford going out and purchasing a car without even mentioning it to your other half. These moments are crude approximations of love, requited through gifts that are major life decisions to almost everyone.

Under no circumstances would I enjoy choosing a huge debt without sharing the responsibility with my wife. There is nothing so arrogant as thinking you know what piece of machinery your significant other would like to send in monthly checks for.

I like getting books. I could even go as far as purchasing a phone or a nice bag. The overindulgence and complete disregard of fiscal responsibility of purchasing a car for someone else and surprising them with it. It isn’t okay to do this. While it makes for a dramatic commercial, it is inappropriate to suggest it as common or something that we should aspire to.

We should want to work with our loved ones and build a life with them that does not exclude them from the decision making process. Otherwise, what is the point?

I am the type of person that likes getting to a movie at least thirty minutes before it is scheduled to start. I do this in order to make absolutely sure that I will not miss the coming attractions before the feature film. Previews get me more excited for watching movies than I would otherwise be having just rushed in to the theater and finding a seat at the last minute. I become giddy with anticipation for the next installment of the Harry Potter series or for the next film with Ethan Hawke or Ellen Paige. I know that most of the previews will make the films out to be better than they really are, but I don’t so much care for the two minutes that they have me careening off of the sides of buildings or explaining how apacolyptic the world has just become. There is something about the moments between the introduction of an idea and the realization of that idea that are so satisfying.

I think that is why I love the space bar so much on a mac. Whenever I select a file on my hard drive, I press the space bar and I am treated to a preview of whatever that file is. I listen to snippets of songs, take a quick glance at presentations, or just see a few images that have no title information. I get to see them before having to do anything other than pressing the biggest key on my keyboard. It is a small pleasure, but these previews save me huge amounts of time and frustration as I am trying to either be productive (or unproductive in the case of renaming movie and music files).

Previews are visual. They are ways for me to see through a wall, to know what is on the other side without having to scale it. They let me judge things quickly and organize them in my head. Previews allow me to make decisions. I don’t have to know everything to see what is important. I don’t have to waste my time with the things that don’t matter. I can see what works and what is broken.

Everything that I have collected at some point becomes obsolete, but there has never been a very good way for me to purge information, files, links and memorabilia. I usually have to set aside huge chunks of time to go through each item, whether that is a physical piece of paper or link to a website I bookmarked 5 years ago. Because I have collected it all, all of it is subject to obsolescence. And that is why I need a preview for all of it. I need to be able to look at a box and see which of the contents are actually worth keeping around. In essence, I want a space bar for my stuff. I want a coming attractions for all of the things that need sequels in my life.

A new service that I am using, Zootool, is doing this for all of my links. Since my import of all of my bookmarks (from Delicious), this tool has been generating a preview for each of my 2500 links. It has been doing the work of trying to find out what is important and what isn’t, what is broken and what works. Now, at a glance I can look at all of my links and see which ones have returned as an screenshot error. I can also see whether the categories that I had originally labeled them with still measure up. This may not be a revolution, but it is the preview that I have needed for years.

Lists are incredibly handy. They are efficient and they are purposeful. They allow me to collect and maintain the things that are important. But, they can never alert me to obsolescence or to being broken. Only through previews can I actually “see” what is going on. Only by making the things I have collected more visual am I able to organize things according to anything other than topic. I can sort them by reusability, theme, or even color.

Previews are valuable because they let us see what we saw in our collections originally. They bring back everything that we used to know about these things we once held dear. They remind us of were we are going, and what we should be excited about.

They are worth getting somewhere early just to see them.

Related articles

• Zootool is a Visual, Social Bookmarking Tool [Bookmarking Tools] (lifehacker.com)
• Zootool: Visit your Wild Bookmarks In The Zoo (maketecheasier.com)