National Novel Writing Month is just around the corner.

This is the time of year I normally gather a group of students, a few close friends, and we challenge each other to write fifty thousand words of a book while encouraging each other along the way. The challenge is very motivating.

However, after doing this for close to ten years, I’m bowing out.

While I do really well with ridiculous challenges (writing a book in a month, reading the Bible in two, etc.) and they help me accomplish great goals in a short amount of time, I find I burn out at the end of them.

While recognizing my mind works great in sprints, what I really need is the motivation of smaller steps compounded over time. It’s the small, consistent steps that lead to the biggest changes in the end.

After all, for a writer, every month should be novel writing month.

Time to set my sights smaller and for much longer.

Is we often end up on the wrong one. Or worse, we get knocked down from the one we’re on.

I’ve often fell prey to shouting loud and clear on one, only to realize later how my thoughts have changed. It wouldn’t take long for someone digging through my posts to find some of those abandoned boxes over the past five years… never mind the last twenty five.

There are a few I still have a pretty familiar footing on and the combination of my conviction and stubbornness will keep me on there for some time, but I can assure you of my severely bruised ego from coming off some of them.

While some may be important, are they even worthwhile?

One thing to consider is, most often, the contents of the box are usually more valuable than what the person on top has to say.

This year, I opted to step up and teach in an entirely virtual environment.

While my initial thoughts regarding the matter revolved around selfish reasons (the least amount of contact and exposure to others as a means of protecting my family), other ideas percolated:

• I love a challenge
• the merging of digital platforms with education is long overdue and so I might as well jump on the rail line
• it’s an opportunity to learn and prove you can teach an old dog new tricks
• the worst that happens is I pick up some new ideas

However, as I work through this new frontier, some bigger thoughts have been coming my way.

Working in a completely online platform isn’t simply a matter of translating what you do in person to doing it online, it’s rethinking how you approach education in the first place.

I used to think that once we can program AI tools that use adaptive methods of responding to individual student needs, there would be no point in having a human in the room. Technology that can respond to you individually and keep you in the optimal zone of development is a far superior learning mechanism than mass instruction.

However, now I see a weakness of that idea:

It can’t adapt to the holistic person.

People are more than just the “left side” of the brain and while social media has done a tremendous job of manipulating people through their behavioral change algorithms (fancy way of saying, “keeping users addicted”), the reason people flocked to the platforms was for connection.

It occurs to me that what I’m doing right now is trying to merge the best of both worlds. And a scarier thought occurring to me is that what I’m actually doing is creating my own obsolescence as an educator.

If done right, I melt into the background as a support system rather than an active ‘sage.’

And while this idea originally disheartened me, I actually find it motivating. If we can create an education system that actually works in the benefit of each student, providing for their needs… why wouldn’t we rush to do this?

It’ll require an incredible amount of creativity and careful planning, but that’s how all great leaps forward happened. Time for another one.

Looking at a blank screen, figuring out what will go on it, is a practice onto itself.

With nothing on it, the mind begins reeling for something interesting. It craves novelty and hates being bored.

Boredom is the state in which the brain must work overdrive to accept its condition. It is in a vacuum and needs to be filled.

Of course, thanks to our programmed biology, it wants the easiest way out.
One click away…
One swipe away…
One check away…
and the blank screen is replaced with a temporary feeling of satisfaction.

A gambler pulling on a slot machine whose high only lasts as long as the wheels are spinning.

However, boredom is also the state in which we can bring forth our creative self. It’s our greatest state of being because it means all our needs are met and we have an opportunity to elevate ourselves further.

Hence, staring at the blank screen.

It’s an opportunity to say, “Okay, what are we going to do together?”

Some days, there might not be an answer. Other days… it just might provide the answer you need most.

Being a prophet of the future is simple:

Just look at our own history and see where we are in the cycle.

Replace history’s leaders, plagues, issues, trends, wars and moments with the names today and you’ll come across as a master clairvoyant.

But we have a moment right now to finally break the cycle. The world is in disorder—that much is clear. There’s chaos, uncertainty and yet, a tremendous number of strands of hope everywhere.

Let’s pull on those trends of hope… the great things we’ve done… the progress we’ve made… and yank at them until they become our reality.

This could be the time we do something right.

Am I too much of an optimist?

To that, I say, we’ve seen what the world looks like in the hands of realists and pessimists, but we’ve never seen it in the hands of optimists.

Why not start now?

Nora Roberts had some tremendous advice during a Q&A session when someone asked how she manages to juggle her career and her kids.

She explained the key to juggling is to know some balls are plastic and others are glass. The key is to catch the glass ones before they hit the floor.

Considering the climate of today and the endless demands put upon us, both in our personal and our work lives, this is some sound advice to reflect on.

On any given day, balls are going to drop.

I know for myself, when I look at what needs to get done, the first question I always ask is what can be ignored for now. Then I ask what battles am I really willing to fight today because, frankly, some aren’t worth it.

It’s finding out what are the glass balls that will shatter if they hit the floor, and which are the plastic ones that will bounce… maybe even roll away…and can be picked up later.

Not everything is made of glass and it’s a relief to be reminded of that.

The joy of being in a democratic nation is the ability to influence the outcome of the country through a single vote. While you hope your candidate, and the party they represent, will fair the best they can—one should never hold their breath.

My own history of voting was marked under the care of my parents, who openly supported the Liberal party. Who they vote for today is uncertain to me, although in the last election I recall my mother asking the polling station whether “None of the Above” was an option.

Since leaving the home and taking it upon myself to be informed, I have voted widely across the political spectrum in elections. My focus is always on my local candidate and who I feel would best represent the issues of my area, as opposed to the partisan politics many hold onto.

Let’s be clear: politics has, is, and will always, be a game for power.

And power has always been abused.

Lately, however, the game has become more overt… more front and centre… and certainly more manipulative.

The word ‘scandal’ has flooded the media so much, it doesn’t even register a reaction anymore. Parties aren’t even trying to create a vision for the future because they’re so busy pointing fingers at the past.

I can’t tell whether they want me to be jaded with the whole process that I merely give up, or randomly vote for anybody because it really won’t matter at the end of the day.

Right now, I would love to see a vision for the future.

Because all I see are people creating romanticized visions of the past.

I look at my keyboard and see layers of dust and dirt, compounded upon itself from a complete neglect of cleaning it the past year. It’s actually kind of disgusting.

Fingerprints.
Smudges.
Traces of cat hair.
Chip dust that worked its way in-between the homerow keys.

I see a black backdrop with white letter taunting me to write something new today. Something original.

The company lettering on the top right, a red to white transition, reminding me I paid dearly for this piece of hardware. Better hope it doesn’t break anytime soon.

These are the things that grab my attention.

But what I fail to see, and to remember, is this is the keyboard where several books have been written… scores of blog posts… emails that opened opportunities… and has been the conduit for my writing solace.

It’s not what it is, but what it has done and what it is capable of doing.

We’re so eager to look at what’s in front of us right now, we forget to see past the flaws and the supposed perfections.

Look at your hands right now.

Think of all the things your hands have done…
people they’ve held,
shoulders they’ve comforted,
textures they’ve felt

and ask, how many people really know their history?

What we fail to see is what actually makes us human. It’s the stories beyond our senses and we should do well to remember them.

According to the latest research in cosmology, our universe is approximately 13.8 billion years old.

While we can argue about its origins, its expansion, its end and all matters of existence (and the existential crisis to go along with it), there’s something very practical we can envision.

A billion years is a LONG time to imagine.

To give context, a million seconds is 11 days.
A billion seconds… is 32 years.

Almost 14 billion years takes a stretch of the imagination and even then, it’s still hard to fathom.

However, let’s go on a thought experiment.

Imagine a painted line along one of the walls inside of your home. It doesn’t matter what room or what wall, we just want the image.

Now pretend that line is the timeline of the universe from its origins until now. Again, that line encompasses 13.8 billion years, so measure accordingly and figure out how long every millimeter (or inch) represents.

Next comes the fun part.

Think of everything you’re worried about—and I mean life-altering, the world is going to end type of worry.

How much of a mark will it register on that line?

Would it even show up?

You see, long after you and I are gone, that line will continue moving… continue being painted… because we are but a breath in the cosmos.

We are privileged to even look upon it.
To reflect on it.
To be a part of it.
Even for a brief moment.

Thinking upon it underscores our responsibility to share that message with others and appreciate we are all participants in the story of the universe.

Even if we played a minor role, we still played our part.

Three words that bring pain to my heart and soul, yet heard so often.

Alternate versions of this include,
“I don’t like reading.”
“I don’t read.”
“I’m not much of a reader.”

However, beneath the surface of the statement is something much deeper to evoke that response. To use the word hate on an action that has literally transformed society, pulling us into the Enlightenment Era, seems strange.

And yet, I get it.

With decreased attention spans and classrooms that prioritize standardized evaluations over discovery and joy, reading is a chore.

To make matters worse, we’ve created a hierarchy of what qualifies as “good” reading. We’ve absconded “real” books to the judgment of academics and literary critics who have cast aside the marvels of genre writers, graphic novels and children’s books (Ursula K. Le Guin had a lot to say on that matter).

We’ve also punished students by telling them what books they should be reading and forcing their compliance through… you guessed it… more testing, instead of letting them discover literature for themselves while challenging them along the way.

It’s no wonder why reading is met with such response from people. They find it frustrating, difficult and are made to feel stupid by it.

This is incredibly unfortunate with the multitude of outstanding books, authors and mediums in which to access them today.

Let’s be clear, there never was a golden era where everybody sat down and read.

But, we can usher in a new era where more people are willing to find solace in the written word. All it takes is a bit of encouragement and invitation to see what’s out there.