By mid-morning, I was ready to call it in and hope everyone in my home got to the end unscathed.

After a walk with the kids, I decided to re-frame my mood by counting my blessings:

I woke up in a house within a lovely neighbourhood to a loving family. I’m getting time to purely focus on my spouse and children. There is a fridge and pantry full of food and my wife and I are privileged that we get to work from home during this quarantine.

Anything beyond that is gravy and there’s so much gravy being poured that it’s impossible to see the mashed potatoes.

The day turned around.

It ended on such a nice note that I felt a sense of peace in my heart that hadn’t been there for some time.

Counting your blessings–always a good antidote to a rough morning.

Stay off the Internet the morning of April first, or succumb to the endless practical jokes.

This year, on this day:

My Internet is down.
The world is on lockdown.
Economies are crashing.
Every body is in survival mode.

I can’t tell if this is the best time for a practical joke or the best time for a laugh.

Probably the former.

Sometimes, there isn’t anything spectacular for me to say.
No insight to expand upon.
No thought that is festering.
Nothing but a blank page.

Yet, I come to that page with humility.

It beckons me to be there because it knows the only way forward is to write some more.

It challenges me to fill it and like a runner who hit the wall, promises something rewarding if I keep pushing through.

One pen stroke is all it takes to spark an idea, but it won’t let me know which one it is. I must persist.

Sometimes, even with persistence, it doesn’t happen on that page.

There is no magic this time.

Sometimes, it’s just a blank page.

A blank page with words.

I received a heads-up that my post from Lifehack (written in 2013, I think) was referenced again in an article.

I find it neat how something I wrote seven years ago is still being discovered and referenced. It’s a testament to the wisdom of putting your work out there and leaving it there.

It’s also a fascinating trip in time to see where my head and my writing was at the time. There are edits I’d love to make, but that’s what growth is all about.

You need to see where you’ve been.

Leaving it out there and letting it be is something I’ve been improving upon. Its only requirement is to let go of your insecurities and keep going.

This is the fourth iteration of my blogging. The other three have been removed from history, which is a regret because there were probably gems in there. After all, the I don’t get to decide what people will like, what works and what doesn’t.

The article in reference outperformed (and still outperform) all my other posts on Lifehack by a significant margin.

However, I get to watch the long tail of this blog grow.

For the first few years, I would’ve been lucky to have fifty visitors a month. Now I get to see the many articles people gravitate towards on a daily basis. It’s a joy to be able to share a part of myself and watch my own growth as it happens.

I’ve been here for almost a thousand posts and I’m looking to grow a thousand more.

It’s a long tail indeed.

If all you can do is read ten pages: read ten.

If all you can do is write a few lines: write them.

If all you can do is five push-ups: do five.

If all you can do is walk around the block: walk around the block.

If all you can do is cut back on one chip: cut back on one chip.

If all you can do is clear your sink: clear your sink.

We get too weighed down by what we want to do because it doesn’t match what we can do.

If we just start doing what we can, we’ll eventually end up doing what we want.

I’ve heard this quote a few times and while I find it amusing, there’s an underlying theme I want to address.

“Real” writing.

Also included in that category is “real” art.

Let’s talk about graffiti for a second.

I grew up in a city that was so horribly planned, you just assumed you’d get stuck waiting for a train on your way to anywhere. Seriously–even downtown rush hour wasn’t immune.

What made it bearable was watching for graffiti. Some of it was nothing more than vandalism, but some–amazing. Yes, it was still vandalism, but it showcased what graffiti could become.

The artist can take the medium and elevate it.

Like graffiti, blogging is a medium that anybody can access. Some treat it as no more than a glorified journal without concern for content or its presentation. Others pontificate journalistic writing, but are nothing more than spastic armchair critics who merely post their opinions masquerading as research.

I’ll ignore the endless marketing blogs with the same formulaic copy-writing meant to funnel you int some product. I’ll try not to be too harsh as I got suckered into that methodology for a while, but did learn some useful writing tips along the way.

Some blogs, though, are game changers.

They open a world that a long forgotten non-fiction book collecting dust somewhere cannot.

They engage conversation, provoke rebuttals and gather communities.

They’re not mean to replace journal articles or books (though many books today are blog posts with hundreds of filler pages), but become its own medium to showcase what writing can be.

I consider it snobbery to prefix anything with “real.”

“Real” world.
“Real” books.
“Real” writing.
“Real” sports.
“Real” art.
etc.

There’s no such categorization.

There’s just the level it’s been elevated to in its execution.

There are two pandemics happening now.

The first one is COVID-19 and the other is panic.

Panic is propagated by the media and amplified with social media. That’s why I made the conscious decision to digitally retreat, only checking in short bursts.

To help, these posts were/are written by hand or with a plain text editor.

Then March break ended and it was time to check-in with the education world. What ensued was an avalanche of information.

PING! Message from a colleague
PING! Email
PING! Clarification email
PING! Form #1 to track
Check in with my students and their families to see how they’re doing.
PING! Another message from a colleague
ARTICLE “Check this out: Tech tool to connect with students…”
ARTICLE “Stop with the worksheets…”
“Here’s a video tutorial…”
“Check out this free resource…”
PING! Form #2 to track
“Daddy! Can you come over here?”
ARTICLE “This might be grief. Read-on…”
Check out what I’m doing!
PING!
BZZZT!
Article to read
Video to watch
Incoming messages
“Make sure to take care of yourself.”
Kids fighting again.
Realized my lack of sleep last night just hit.
New announcement from the government!
More questions, few answers.

I hit a breaking point.

I updated my students for the day, turned off my phone, shutdown my computer and made a cup of coffee.

I haven’t been infected with the first pandemic (yet), but the second one almost got me today.

Time to prioritize.

It’s the government’s job to make the big decisions. That’s why we elect them–for exactly these situations.

Then the chain of command comes down to me.

What do I get to decide?
I get to decide how to react.

What’s my responsibility?
To make sure my family is okay, I’m okay and my students are okay.
After that, I can filter out everything except for what’s best right now.

And that’s what I’m going to do.

Our brains are hard-wired for tragedy, panic and all things negative. It’s our biological programming–the thing that saved us in the wilderness.

Heard rustling in the bushes?

Don’t wait to find out if it’s a predator or the wind, just run.

Another name for it is our “fight or flight” response mechanism.

The problem is our brain cannot separate a tiger about to maul us to death from being freaked out about a spider in the house. If it stresses you, it activates.

Useful, but really hard to work around in a time of mass panic. We want to be informed, but we’re attracted to the immediate and the stressful.

When you take a step back from the noise, you can see some incredible things happening.

People are connecting to each other more than ever. We’re connecting online and at the table.

We’re reaching out to those cold contacts to see how they’re doing and stretching our social networks as far as we can take them. We’re also learning which ones to avoid.

We also have every top medical researcher in the world working non-stop to come up with solutions and… here’s the big one… sharing this information with each other. The developments happening are accelerating and we’re no longer wondering if, but when.

Amidst the outcomes that will happen as a result of what we’re facing now, we may see some strong, positive ones.

This may bring us together in a small way and that’s a good step to take.

The last hermit, that we know about, may provide us with a pearl of wisdom during this time.

While he refuses to claim any worldly wisdom, enlightenment, or any form of transcendence, a person who willingly isolates themselves from society is the perfect source of wisdom. Of course, you can also read up on the many spiritual seekers who also willingly retreated from the world to provide comfort.

Back to our hermit.

When asked what he did for most of his days, he tells us most of his time was spent sitting and thinking. He read the occasional book, played the occasional video game and went on walks, but most of his days was to just sit.

How did that not get boring?

He replied that boredom is a word we invented because of our perceived need to always be doing something.

If we can get it out of our head that we need to do something, or need to be somewhere, perhaps we can eliminate the boredom in our days. It’s a challenge, but it’s worth examining.

After all, are you in a rush to be anywhere now?

If you want to spread a lie quickly, mix in a bit of truth.

Fiction has a lot to teach us about ourselves and the world around us. Reading it provides us insight into a world behind the author’s hand, guiding us into their imagination and discovering something new.

In-between the scenes, dialogue and extraordinary measures characters go through to accomplish their goal, there are glimmers of a mirror to force us to reflect. The reason fiction resonates with us is because it opens up something inside of ourselves.

We know what we’re reading is a lie, but the truth of what we’re reading is what part of us opens… or closes. We get drawn into work because of our own latent desires.

Goosebump books, by R.L. Stine, hook young readers because the world of Goosebumps is perfect. There’s no divorced parents, gruesome torture or even death. Young people feel safe entering that world and feel comfortable getting sucked into the scary, or horror, part of it. A Goosebumps book is a hug from your parents after having a nightmare.

Fantasy books hook young adults, specifically the outliers, most. It’s an appeal to escape to another world where your sense of wonder, weirdness and call to be more powerful than the nerd you are beckons the reader. Eventually, many of those readers find their place in the world and those fantasy books don’t hold the same sway they once did.

My students are hooked on the Gone series this year. Mystery, adventure, wonder, action, suspense, thriller… it was all there for them. I had a hard time getting through the first hundred pages because I couldn’t stop thinking about the babies and young children (I eventually put that part of my brain to rest and blasted through the rest).

We don’t remember books for what lies the author told, but for what truths were illuminated in our reading of it.

Fiction is necessary because its lie is what brings you to the truth.