2020 will be the fifth year that I’ve been writing for this site.

My plan of action was to just have a platform in which I was writing consistently because getting out of the habit of writing was always a downfall of mine. So while there are many instances where I wasn’t doing creative writing, I was writing here. And now I’m doing more creative writing while still posting.

I somehow managed to leverage technology to make this work in my busy schedule with a full time job and family.

The traction from having written almost 1000 posts is showing.

I don’t pay attention to traffic all that often because I don’t want to let it influence what I do on my daily basis. I check in from time to time to see what people are enjoying and it appears I’m getting more than enough traffic to completely just do book reviews.

I also get quite a few hits on many of my articles that I wrote years ago. I forget what I wrote and have to recheck, but it’s neat to see what I was thinking at the time.

It’s quite outstanding to see the long tail of my work and to know some of you have been with me for since the beginning. In fact, some of you have been with me before the beginning when I tried different iterations of this site. I truly am proud and thankful that you’ve kept in touch with me, reached out to me and kept me going.

For the first few years, it really didn’t seem like much is happening.

Nor did I expect much to happen. I asked myself that if I wrote every day, and nobody read it, what I still be happy doing it?

And the answer to that was yes.

The process of sitting down and writing every day, putting it out in public and defending my craft was more important than any traffic that I could be generating, and any marketing shtick I could be using.

And now it appears something is happening. The seeds that I’ve been planting for quite some time now are sprouting.

There’s been some contacts. Some pitches.

And certainly some traction.

Nothing may come of it right away, but it’s coming.

The seeds are planted, and now the seeds are growing.

I often tell my students human beings are horrible long term planners. We’re the worst.

We always overestimate what we can do in a short amount of time.

It’s about taking small steps, then giant leaps and trusting the process to guide you along the way.

Even when it seems like nothing is happening, trust the process. Something is always happening.

This is quite a popular thing to say whenever we look at a new generation and think, “What the heck is going on with them?”

But consider this conversation with one of my students:

“My uncle told me he was homophobic, but not racist. For the 70s, that was pretty good.”

And he’s right that it was good for the time, but I also appreciate the recognition he gave about how things have changed. This generation of young people have a much better handle on those problems. Even more so than my generation (I give ourselves a solid 6/10).

Despite what you may see in the media, racism is something we’re hyper aware of and challenging, even on a systemic level. Homophobia is another systemic problem we are slowly edging towards a better place every day. This is thanks to the young people today.

My observations over the past ten years is that kids these days haven’t changed much, but there are a few things that have changed with them.

In person, they’re actually a lot nicer.

I say in person because people’s addiction to online services, I’m speaking specifically with social media, have a tendency to bring out their inner troll. However, that just doesn’t apply to young people–it’s everyone.

They’re are a lot safer and many things in the world are a lot better. For instance, they have access to technology that we could only dream about growing up. Also, extreme poverty and violent crime is at its lowest since we’ve been tracking it.

We can’t blame them for having these comforts because we created a society that gave it to them. What I hope (and see) is they figure out how to use this inheritance for the betterment of the planet and everybody in it.

So yes, kids these days…

Sometimes I look at my classroom full of hormonal teenagers and just shake my head.

Other times I get pretty frustrated with them.

But most times, I just smile. On the inside, I know the future is still looking pretty good. Provided, of course, we don’t kill ourselves before getting there.

It’s my birthday.

I stopped celebrating this day years ago. It’s not because I feel bad about getting older, or I have some kind of personal qualms against celebrating a year of my life, but I like to think of this as a quiet day to reflect on the past year.

After all, it’s been a year and a lot happens in that time.

I would like to say there were many life changing moments for me this year–even the insignificant ones that didn’t seem like they would have a long term effect.

One thing I learned is that all things in life (good and bad) happen within their season and then they go away. I remember this time last year: my daughter still wasn’t sleeping through the night, our family just moved, it was very chaotic and my classes were excruciating… almost bringing me to the point of quitting.

This time things are a lot more calm, smooth and everything seems to be in order. Looking back at last year, especially for choosing the time that we did to move, I realized it was timed perfectly.

I made a lot of choices to make significant improvements in my life and in my health. Perhaps it’s with the age of 40 looming in the next few years and I might just be early for my midlife crisis.

But I can see that taking all the steps I can to be the best version of myself is an investment in me, my family and those around me.

I’m eating healthier, I feel better, I’m reading more, my mind is sharper, I’m still learning new skills and I’m trying new things every day.

I learned how to take advantage of the pockets of time that I’ve had, and the tools available at my disposal, to get more writing done.

The past few months, you may have noticed an increase in volume of the writing, not only for each post, but the amount of posts.

That’s because I taught myself how to use dictation. My commute to work allows me to dictate some of my writing and my car to and from work has become a joyous part of my day as a result. I look forward to my “writing sessions.”

I’m launching another book that’s been in my drawer for quite some time and it’s one I really love and very proud of.

I made a new circle of friends that have kept me accountable, pushed me to greater things and it’s a group of wonderful people that I can rely upon.

I’ve cut off those people in my life who have been a negative influence.

I’m seeing the benefits of many of the things I’ve built upon come into fruition.

Piece by piece and little by little, the path I’ve set for myself years ago is slowly coming together in ways that I didn’t even think it would.

It’s affirming to know that I’m on the right track for once.

Well, actually it’s affirming to know that I’m on any path and not just hopelessly wandering and hoping life gets me somewhere. Although, that was a fun time in my life too.

This year I’ve really learned that whole idea that you can overestimate what you can do in a year, but severely underestimate what you can do in ten.

I’ve been taking the baby steps this year for the ten years ahead.

I also learned that tomorrow isn’t promised to anybody.

So while I plan for ten years, and hope for it, I understand that anything can happen.

I spend way less time on distracting websites, social media accounts and video games, replacing that time with my family and books. Sometimes both (my kids love having me read to them).

I’ve recognized that I have a lot more to learn in life and the lessons of the people before me should really be taken into consideration… rather than just a smile, polite nod and a thank you.

The big realization this year, however, is that I’m still young.

Provided I take care of myself and those around me, I have a lot of life ahead.

And I’m excited about that.

The hardest part about improving as a teacher is trying to find the particular areas that give the greatest impact.

This is difficult because researchers are constantly telling us what one thing will improve teaching, students learning, and get them to a level beyond their current achievement status.

Unfortunately, all of them miss the nuances of the classroom.

There is no one particular, simple thing to “fix” all of education.

A simple explanation is not going to suffice to solve an entire education system full of students with a wide assortment of backgrounds, abilities, motivations and character traits.

Good teaching is a multitude of things that come together. It’s an art of making hundreds (if not thousands) of tweaks that work in a particular environment and it will look different for every school and every teacher.

This isn’t unique to teaching, as we do this in society as well.

We like to point to a problem and say the solution is this one simple fix. Just look multitude of daily clickbait articles that tell you you only need these three things… or this one simple thing will…

No. The answer is no.

It’s not that one simple thing and it’s not those list of things. You can’t reduce a complicated problem to a simple solution. The problem is more nuanced than that.

Solutions to major problems are not simple.

They’re doable. We can work at them. There are many solutions and we should implement those, but there’s not one single solution that’s going to work.

So for those who are skeptical that one solution will fix everything–you should be. But don’t disregard it as something to not even try.

Big problems require many solutions.

It’s just figuring out what’s going to work here and now.

I’m finishing up a brilliant book right now by Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comics, about a term he calls “loserthink.”

In essence, it’s a way of thinking that keeps you in a bubble and has you miss out on the broader picture and a better understanding of what’s really happening. Many people, especially myself, are guilty of it.

I’ll save the overall impression for when I post the book review. One of the more interesting parts of the book comes when he talks about direction versus accuracy.

Let’s say you’re going to see a personal trainer who says that if you follow their program, you will gain X amount of muscle and lose Y amount of weight. You follow the program and you gain muscle you lose weight but it’s not the same numbers as what the trainer said.

Loserthink would have you suggest that because the accuracy of the claim is off that the trainer is a liar, awful or deceitful.

However, what you should really pay attention to is the direction at which you’ve gone–you’ve gained muscle, lost weight and are healthier. So the trainer did put you on the right track, but weren’t accurate with the results.

We have many examples of this in our world.

I look at this as something that I really need to incorporate into my life because I have a horrible habit of only committing to something unless the process will get me a 100% accurate outcome. In other words, I spend more time researching the best way instead of just moving in that direction.

Direction will always win over accuracy (unless you’re a mathematician calculating precision instruments that could save or kill an astronaut–then you want accuracy) because you can adjust the course as you go.

If the original accuracy is off, you can adjust. Your worldview isn’t shattered. You don’t have to fight against sunk costs. You can just pivot and move again.

In the world of making decisions, go for direction and then accuracy can be adjusted later.

I guess I was thinking about this years ago, when I wrote this article for Lifehack.

Ready, fire, aim.

This year our math department switched it up a bit.

We decided to do our unit on probability early on in the year. This unit is usually saved for the very end and we have to truncate it because there’s never enough time to really get through it.

However, since probability is something we use every single day, or close to, we thought it should get some more importance. It’s the unit that can answer the dreaded question, “When are we ever going to use this in life?”

The first day of probability, I asked my students what they think the odds are of winning the lottery. They took some good guesses and then we looked it up:

1 in 28 million (Lotto Max in Canada).

I then asked what are the odds of getting struck by lightning in your lifetime:

1 in 3000

And then we looked at other odds– winning a rock paper scissors game, finding a coin on the ground, me catching them in a lie, etc.

This lesson was meant to show that thinking mathematically can help you make better decisions instead of emotionally fueled ones that are guaranteed to work against you.

Then we spend the entire unit running theoretical probability versus experimental probability. What students learn (hopefully) in the end is that given enough time, the theoretical and the experimental lineup with each other.

In other words, when you actually look at the math behind the world, and the odds, many of our decisions, don’t make sense.

We like to think we’re rational people, but we run on emotions most of the time.

How does this help us in the long run?

One of the challenges, any teacher must face is when a student asks that lovely question: When are we ever going to use this in life?

And sometimes you have to be honest and say the answer is never.

But if you can train yourself to think…

…and have a different mindset when making decisions, being presented information, and needing to analyze it…

You will make better decisions for your own life.

So for return on investment–avoid the lottery.

However, the probability of using any type of education and learning for your future is really high. Whatever the cost time, energy or money, it’s worth it.

Whenever people hear about leading a simple life, the assumption always turns to material possessions.

Indeed, the minimalism movement exasperates the problem by spending inordinate amounts of time talking about how to pare down your possessions, and only a fraction of time about paring down your life.

But really simple living is really just that. Living, simply.

In other words, not being bogged down with 400 things on the go while still wanting to do 6000 more.

Simple living is having a schedule that is stress free, predictable and keeps you content.

Simple living is taking the multitude of things that you want to do, and bringing it down to just a few.

For instance, my day is pared down to its essentials (and still working on it):
Spend time with my family, cook healthy meals, write and read.

Other items that used to be casual ways to spend my time, including playing the occasional video game, has been taken off the list.

I’m still working on it, tweaking it and always reflecting on the essential things I want to do with my time. In doing so, there’s no desire for me to acquire excessive amounts of unnecessary material possessions as they don’t fit with my lifestyle.

A simple life is hard to get, but it’s easy to keep once you’re there.

I still hope to get there.