There are some lesson I re-learned (like the importance of “yes, dear” and leave it at that), but below are the lessons I take with me into 2019. Some of them I already knew intellectually, but now I have a full understanding of what they mean.
Go Slow
This has more to do with long term thinking than physically moving slower… although, that does play into it as well. If you start thinking decades down the road, then every day can be a little piece to get there. In-between those bits, there is time to enjoy life.
With reference to my writing, I always found a disconnect between the speed at which I type (80-110 wpm) and the slow production of completed projects. Whereas other writers I know who type much slower (some are two finger bandits), can produce monstrous quantities in less time.
It finally occurred to me I need to slow down my typing in the same way writing by hand forces you to slow down. It gives your mind an opportunity to move past your fingers, thereby always giving you something to write about.
Moving Sucks
Since moving to Ottawa in 2004, I’ve moved a total of 9 times. During one of those years, I was living in two places at once (graduate school in Kingston while still doing magic shows in Ottawa on the weekend).
No matter how organized you are, the cost and physical exhaustion of moving just sucks.
This year my wife and I agreed this would be the last time we move until some serious life circumstance forces us out. We love our new house and are looking forward to making it our lifetime home. We also agreed that if we really needed some extra space, we can plan to build an extension to our upstairs as that cost would still be cheaper and less taxing than moving houses.
Life Never Plateaus
I remember seeing this clip from Waking Life and while I’ve resonated with many of the other philosophical conversations of the movie, this scene finally makes sense to me.
They speak about how at some point in your life (mid-thirties for instance), you expect everything is going to gel and settle and it doesn’t happen.
They’re absolutely correct.
There Is No One All-Inclusive Solution
I got my start writing online (under my real name) through productivity blogs. At that time, I was a person obsessed with coming up with the perfect system and seeking the best tool that would be the solution all my needs.
I vacillated between paper and digital, four different cloud storage systems, read a ton of books and spent endless hours researching (and testing for) the best word processor, Internet browsers, to-do list, note taking app – everything. It ended up splicing me in a thousand different directions with no system to call my own, making me less productive.
We’re now at the point that all the most popular tools are more powerful than what most people would need, easier to use than ever and the differences between them is merely splitting hairs.
Picking one is simply a matter of preference or familiarity.
Since my school board is all about Google, it’s become my most familiar go-to. 80% of what I need is in the Google ecosystem and the other 20% is used to fill in the gaps.
Work In Small Packets
This fits with the go slow lesson of the year, but has been re-enforced by the craziness of children. Waiting for swaths of uninterrupted time to get work done doesn’t happen in my life.
I check email and my digital messages sparingly, but am interrupted all day long. After all, I’m a middle-school teacher and I come home to two toddlers.
If I’m going to get work done, I must anticipate a much longer timeline to complete it and then work in bite-sized chunks – ten minutes here, five minutes there. The key is to have something to show for my efforts at the end of that small amount of time.
Oddly, since working this way, I’ve been getting a lot more done than at any other point in my life while still being able to enjoy family, friends and the important details that give life meaning.
Surrender to What Life Offers
I was not expecting to move this year, but the stars aligned to allow us to buy the house we always wanted.
This has been my toughest year in education, but I’m seeing more breakthroughs in it than any other.
It’s also been a tough year personally, but I’m feeling stronger than ever coming out of it.
Opportunities are coming my way that I had not been seeking and while I can attribute some of that to the many years of work I put in leading up to this point, it’s really neat to see it unfold.
Sometimes, life comes knocking at your door when you least expect it. During those moments, it’s critical you let that in because it’s amazing what happens after.
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Tomorrow will be my post of what I will look forward to in 2019. It’s not a resolutions post per se, but more of a part two to this post.
I also want to take a moment to wish you a Happy New Year and thank you deeply for reading, commenting and connecting with me. This site’s intention is to be a workbench of my thoughts and it’s really humbling to see how many of you are following along.