Category Archives: Personal

The small things

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That Janet E Davis is always highlighting that blog posts don’t always need to be essays so i thought i’d share a small thing.

For 3 years I sang songs to my daughter and after 1 she started to join in and after 2 she could sing on her own. This year she can teach me songs! This week she taught me this one:

I have a little turtle, his name is tiny tim.
I put him in the bathtub to see if he could swim.
He drank up all the water, he drank up all the soap.
I put him down to bed with a bubble in his throat.
It weeent BUBBLE. BUBBLE. BUBBLE. POP!

I think the small thing for me is that children never cease to amaze me (especially mine). The other one is that you’re never too old to learn something from someone younger than you :D .

Here’s a youtube of the closest video match I found:

The circuitry of my head

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UnknownSo as part of the ongoing exploration of online learning or MOOCing around as i’m fondly calling it, I enrolled in a second MOOC. This MOOC is nothing to do with anything I really need to know. I am doing it for the love of learning. Suitably it is the Learning Creative Learning MOOC.

I might step back a bit here. Just a little though.

Just over a blog posting ago…

Before I found a tweet about OpenBadges and before that led me to MOOCs and the joining of, I took a small test on a whim. The test highlighted that I am motivated by learning. This is not the learning which results in a piece of paper that motivates me. This motivation is through the solid act of learning in itself. I liken this to experiencing a puzzle box.

“Before you lies a simple box unknown, locked with a mechanism that can be discovered through tactile exploration. Unlock this mystery box and whether you find it is empty or full, the satisfaction is not in the contents, but in the opening.”

The discovery of being motivated by learning resonated with me on some level. I had been feeling a little unmotivated recently and this suggested a way forward. Looking through mental lists of options I would cycle through over and over again finding not a single one that appealed. In part this is laziness: I am easily dissuaded from difficult things. In part it is tiredness: I have a lot on! In part though: it is because I lacked a motivation. So I am on a quest to find one.

A modern take on the puzzle box

A modern take on the puzzle box

Let’s step back into creative learning again.

Learning about learning…

Each week of the MOOC reading is assigned and tasks are suggested. Task 1 is around doing the reading and reflecting on it.The reading this week was around connected learning (video) as an approach which differs from traditional education by leveraging the interest of an individual and allowing that interest to develop in a way that improves their academic, civic or employment prospects. The connected element means that new media helps develop this innate passion or talent. E.g., in the plainest of terms, the writer is allowed to write for the passion of it, they post their work online and receive feedback from peers on their interest. They learn from this and eventually become an author 1.

I haven’t reflected much but isn’t there something to that (especially for those learning-motivated) which makes good sense? I don’t think it’s a new idea – there seems to be a trend recently for the internet to find a new way of doing something and for people to think that nothing like it ever happened before. I’m confident that there was connected learning before connected computers which is why I like the phrase from one of the readings: “New media amplifies opportunities for connected learning.” The internet is a massive great big amplifier of things, including learning, then. Now that I like the idea of!

The second task is much more intriguing: read Seymour Papert’s essay on the “Gears of My Childhood” and write about an object from your childhood that interested and influenced you.

Much more up my street in my current exploration of the world. Perhaps a little bit ego-orientated but internal focus helps introverts like me make sense of the world. Hopefully we then find a way to apply that externally.

So let’s jump back again. Way back this time. I called this post the circuitry of my head because it resonated with an object pertinent in my childhood. The computer. I’m adding in a second object though: DNA.

The computer and DNA

My earliest memory of a computer was in school. I’m not sure what it was. It had a game involving a train and traffic signals. It had a painting app. It was all I can remember about the machine. I played with it twice, once in Year 1 and once in Year 2. Nobody really knew how to use it beyond those two apps i’m sure. I’m fairly confident it was an IBM PC AT given what I remember about it.

My second earliest memory was when my mum and I lived with my Nan. An uncle at the time had a BBC Micro. I’m also convinced that he never really knew how to use it. One day when he was out I sneaked in and retyped in a command i’d seen him type. It was probably a load command of some kind. A while later something happened.

Here’s the thing. After those early experiences I didn’t have a computer until I was older. It was a Commodore 64. My family never had the money for computers those early years so I spent many of them still wondering about those cream white boxes with the green text or the poor colour range and what made them work. What was inside them that brought them to life.

Commodore Datassette tape drive

Commodore Datassette tape drive – by Toni Saarikko

Those same years I was learning that I was broken. That what was bringing me to life was also, slowly, destroying me. At age 8 I did not have the real comprehension of that 2. At age 8 I believe two objects in my universe collided quietly and even I didn’t notice for a while.

I found that Commodore, and the Amiga that followed and the 486 after that and the Pentium and the AMDs and the Core 2′s and ultimately the i7 i have today were all there at the moments I needed them.

I learned about computers at a time people really started to use them personally (80s). I learned about the internet arguably when it started to enter the mainstream (90s). I studied the science of computing just before it has become essential in information societies (00s) and now I am productive on a daily basis using them despite their still being an element of seperation (10s).

DNAs influence has followed a similiar trajectory. I lost any potential in physical pursuits early on (80s). I went to secondary school at a time when it became an option for those with disabilities to study in the mainstream (90s). I went to university at a time when funding existed to make it feasible for me to leave home (00s) and finally if computers didn’t exist as they do today my access to the world would be severely limited and my job would be difficult 3. Books for a start are impractical. But research doesn’t need books anymore.

So in true double-helix fashion two strands have been joined, two objects have provided a structure for my path through the world, a sequence to progress by. The DNA was an object influencing me behind the scenes, subtly limiting certain choices and promoting others. The computer was acting as a magnet pulling me toward it, clearly highlighting an interesting path forward. It’s probably also the reason my dissertation was in genetic algorithms. I still have a mild fascination with evolution today.

I think it wasn’t the only path open to me. I might have taken another path. I might have written or reported. I might have travelled or read. I might have managed or sketched. All but for one thing: I need to understand the puzzles in the boxes. It’s the circuitry of my head.

Digital DNA - [attribution unkown :(]

Digital DNA – [attribution unkown :( ]

Notes:

  1. This really oversimplifies process, but it is the core of it. ↩
  2. At age 30, i’m still not sure I have it ↩
  3. Independently that is ↩

Ten for 2013

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I haven’t blogged for a good while, but my son is now 4 months 1 and the daily chaos is starting to settle down. I can spend time outside of the work->food->sleep routine again and not worry that I won’t get enough of the latter element!

2013 has rolled around and I think that gives me a chance to stop and ponder of what it might bring. I’ve always set resolutions that were huge and in many ways unnatainable at the time but this year i’ve decided to learn from something I started doing in 2012. Tweeting. It told me that small is sometimes enough. In 140 characters or slightly more 2 then here’s Ten for 2013.

#1 Tweet More

The simplest one. Re-engage with twitter. It makes things a bit more interesting and a lot more social. i’ve enjoyed my holiday from it with miniboy but I’d like to keep going.

#2 Blog Again

Something not so simple. Blogging is tough and time consuming for me. I edit, re-edit and delete more than I jot-down and publish. It’s a wonderful outlet though and you can learn so much. I love writing too despite always wanting to do it better and faster.

 #3 JFDI

I spend plenty of time waiting and wondering if I should do something in a variety of contexts. Should I go to that event? Should I send this email? Should I take time away from a priority? Well this year i’m aiming to JFDI 3.

#4 Be Positive

Apparently people who are positive achieve more. I read it on a blog so it must be true! Regardless of the truth of the statement I find that vigorously positive enthusiasts drag me to want to do things even if they can’t be done. Far more than notoriously negative narn’eds 4 do. So :D :D :D :D :) :) :) :D is going to be me.

#5 Stay Awake

It’s easy to coast if you don’t try not to. The rail is smoother than the dirt track and it’s easy to climb onto the train and enjoy the views, maybe have a tea and a biscuit, grab a slow read, have some quiet chats and not worry your going to crash. BUT NOTHING HAPPENS ON THE TRAIN AND YOU MIGHT FALL ASLEEP. You can’t make great air either. This is a metaphor for doing better at that.

#6 Love

The simplest of simples. There is an emotion in me and I have a family to use it on. So i’d like to just make sure that I keep making sure they know about it.

#7 Eat Better

In 2012 I spent roughly £218 on takeaway food at an average of 2.5 per month 5! I spent about the same eating out, I probably spent less eating McDonalds 6. I think it would be good to take a year to just eat a little better than that.

#8 Take the Time

It’s easy to miss a moment if your too busy looking for one. Sometimes just taking the time to enjoy what you are doing, with those you are doing it with is enough to make those moments without even needing to look for them. More 1:1s and Family Activities with Wife, Baby, Daughter. More time taken to stop and talk to people. 7

#9 Keep Coding

I can sort of code but I don’t do enough of it to remember how. I let some gray matter dwindle over the last few years and through things like codecademy and ebooks i’m going to make 2013 a year to ressurect those nerve connections. I only need the basics!

#10 Draw Stuff

I love sketching out ideas but I always write notes instead. This year i’m going to do more sketching and maybe adopt some of these ideas for using it for note taking too. Visual images work so much better than bullets.

So these are my Simple Ten. I don’t think any of them require me to do anything I don’t want to be doing but think i should or achieve anything i’m unlikely to be able to. They just require me to do more of the easy little things I enjoy.

Happy 2013!!! :D

Notes:

  1. He’s wonderful btw ↩
  2. well we can’t completely stick to the rules can we ↩
  3. The F is for “frelling” kids ↩
  4. my wife’s term I assure you ↩
  5. Hey I shared it though! ↩
  6. But only because it’s cheaper ↩
  7. largely under Resolution #1: Tweet More ↩

Songsof.me

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Following in the trend of some other wonderful #weeklyblogclubbers this week I thought i’d pick up on the sixsongsof.me Guardian challenge. @janetedavis has already kicked off with some great posts and I also noticed Kate Bentham too. There have been others 1 since this post started to be drafted too.

Pick six songs which fit a set of six questions which define you 2 …

What was the first song you ever bought?

Honestly, I was really late to my own music collection. I was age 14/15 before I bought a CD. I think it was “Do You Know What I Mean” by Oasis. I had been given songs and albums before then but this one I remember I went out and bought as a single. I wanted to be cool and Oasis was cool 3. I’d never really bought music so i found it hard to know what I wanted back then – In some ways I let my tastes be set by my friends.

I met my maker, I made him cry
And on my shoulder he asked me why
His people won’t fly through the storm

What song takes you back to your childhood?

Which bit! It was a long time. Early on my parents music tastes seem to take me back a fair bit – my Dad would constantly play music at me. He seemed to think that telling me how great something was, meant i’d appreciate it 4. It had the opposite effect. I think – music needs to find you on it’s own sometimes. The Beatles jumps right in my head. “Yellow Submarine”, “When i’m 64.” Kate Bush from my mum. Haunted by that voice.

Then there’s anything that relates to a cartoon sometimes age 5 sometimes age 8. I was a TV kid. I watched anything I could.  For some reason the “There are no cat’s in america song’ is floating around in there. Then the lion king soundtrack comes in at age 11? takes me right back to a head which was filled with simpler worries and focused on play. I can remember most of the soundtrack. BY HEART.

Hakuna Matata, What a wonderful phrase
Hakuna Matata, Aint no passing phase.
It means no worries for the rest of your days

Not so much childhood but mid teens. 16-17 or so. The entire album of “Dizzy up the Girl” by Goo Goo Dolls.  A weird mix of memories here but definitely teen angst, a lot of late nights in internet chat rooms, writing a journal and terrible poetry. The album almost has a silent second track in the background featuring the tap tap tap of a keyboard in a dark, monitor-lit room. “Acoustic #3″ please.

And I wonder where these dreams go
When the world gets in your way
What’s the point in all this screaming
No one’s listening anyway

What is your perfect love song?

Speaking of Goo Goo Dolls. I was big into “Iris” as a love song but it’s nowhere near perfect. Now though… hmmm I love “Toothpaste Kisses” by the Macabees. It’s the music. It helps that we chose it for our wedding and i remember standing in the memorial chamber and it was echoing up into the roof. Really magical.

Cradle me, I’ll cradle you
I’ll win your heart with a woop-a-woo
Pullin’ shapes just for your eyes.

I feel I need to split this in two. There’s love as in magic and YAY and that’s the ones above. But there’s love which is quieter and little bit of heartache. For me that’s 3am by Matchbox Twenty. Probably up in the top 10 songs ever for me.

She says “baby”
“It’s 3 am I must be lonely”
When she says baby
Well I can’t help but be scared of it all sometimes
That the rain’s gonna wash away what I believe in

And by far the one that rattles the heart everytime is Goodbye my Lover, James Blunt. IT HURTS! RAW!

What song would you want at your funeral?

Do I have to die? I suppose we all do sometime. I’m not sure if there’s a song for this.

If I want one. I want a song which says I lived. I also want a song which says I’m free. The dichotomy that rules me I suppose. I sometimes feel i’m living in a cage and some would say that death is a kind of release. I don’t know. I almost died once 5 and I know that I wanted not to.  Is there a song which captures all of that? Ever since I read “Speaker for the Dead” in the Ender’s Game sequence I always loved the idea that you could try to express the ‘truth’ of someone. Perhaps I want a song that does that for me. That’s why this one is so tricky.

You know what. I love “Beethoven’s Silence” – Ernesto Cortazar. Piano Music at my funeral. Totally 6.

Which song will always get you dancing?

“I Gotta Feelin” by the Black Eyed Peas. My daughter was born to this song. i’d never picked up on it at the time but my wife remembered it clear as day and when she told me it was like a memory was rebuilt in my head. It’s just so fun a song.

I gotta feeling. That tonight’s gonna be a good night.

One last song that makes you, you

“Disease” Matchbox Twenty – it just sinks right into me. In a way it’s about a girl, but for me it’s not about a girl at all. Or should I say the girl is a metaphor for the world around me.

I’ve got a disease deep inside me baby
makes me feel uneasy
I can’t live without you
Tell me what am I supposed to do about it?
Keep your distance from me
Don’t pay no attention to me
I got a disease

At the same time I find “Unwell” by Matchbox Twenty rather fitting too – i’ve always been a bit off centre. Not eccentric or wild by any means. I dream of ninjas and dwarves and live a little in a world of my own.

All day staring at the ceiling
Making friends with shadows on my wall
All night hearing voices telling me
That I should get some sleep
Because tomorrow might be good for something

Don’t we all? :D

Notes:

  1. watch weeklyblogclub for part 2′s! ↩
  2. I’ve tried to link to youtube versions of all the songs but I haven’t watched them through so hopefully they all match the song! ↩
  3. and buying their CD made me cool ↩
  4. it didn’t ↩
  5. or it felt so much like I would. It’s hard to tell what would have happened ↩
  6. This would never work. Piano music seems to sit well in my head but outside in other people’s  heads. They’d think. ‘que?’ ↩

Social Media, Employment and Avatar Rights

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A little bit of idle wandering around social media, employment and individual rights…

Broadcast Locked? Adaptation of Original work by Nevit Dilmen (Silhouette_Mr_Pipo.svg)

Broadcast Locked?

Here’s a completely imaginary scenario 1:

“It’s Tuesday 14th September 2014 and BOB is typing what appears to be a harmless message on Facebook. It appears to be that because really that is what it is. However, there’s a misinterpretation by a colleague on Facebook who happens to think it’s an inappropriate commentary and decides to act by sending a copy of the text to work. The next day BOB is summoned into the office and given a stern reprimand.”

Is there anything wrong with that? Depending where you stand it’s a complete invasion of BOBs personal world, or a perfectly valid employee management activity. Personal Privacy vs Public Relations perhaps. Is BOBs personal content in part owned by his employer? Did his colleague have the right to replicate the content? Perhaps BOB should be more careful? What is the boundary between work and home when it comes to social media?

I have an issue with this somewhere. I won’t go as far as to say that i’ve come to a set view on what it is yet. There’s a kaleidoscope of issues and the lines blur easily with a simple twist of the looking glass. I could just be waiting for the right picture to emerge even if i’m uncomfortable with the current one.

I still find myself feeling though, that somehow we’re idly wandering into very dangerous territory. As social media platforms become mainstream and employers expect staff to fit their personal and professional presences into an acceptable bubble could we be losing something valuable? Even when ‘off the clock’ are we subject to certain expectations? The danger is that it would be easy for the balance to tip in favor of employers than employees.

Some might say that this is the same problem as “Who owns your public image? 2” – the higher our profiles in a community the more caution we expect people to take in what they do. Celebrities and Politicians fall in and out of grace on the smallest of moral dissapointments. I think in many ways though this is subtly different – my Facebook feed is selective. I have chosen who is on there, I use privacy settings, I’m mostly careful about what I say 3 but that doesn’t mean i’ll never say anything by mistake.

My twitter feed is certainly public 4 but at the same time it relies on people looking for it in some way. Passively watching streams or otherwise. The danger here is that we create a situation where it is impossible to create a truly personal profile without hiding behind a pseudonym and making no connections to people you don’t trust entirely. Essentially meaning our digital selves become what we do rather than who we are.

So are we heading into a double life requirement? I don’t think that works well on platforms like twitter or facebook. I might be JP_Worker#3 5 and JonoPatterson 6. Having one of those doesn’t make the other any less me and any less open to accountability Similiarly I could have two Facebook profiles but to me it misses the entire point of being an individual and there are some good reasons not to (<– also an excellent example of the dangers of being too open). I don’t think it affords any more protection to the personal me to have a work me too.

This all vaguely reminds me of an interesting idea by Raph Koster, a game designer who saw problems beggining to emerge in the world of gaming, social worlds and avatar based interactions. ‘Who owns your Avatar?’ If your avatar acquires virtual property who owns that? If you leave the game are you leaving behind an asset which should be protected or just a digital file that should be deleted? Raph’s draft essay (with help from numerous individuals) was the idea of avatar rights, a set of protections given to owners of avatars which would protect them and their digital assets from complete abuse.

User digital person via Wikimedia Commons

Who owns the digital you?

For me the question is a little similiar “who owns your digital self?” I’m not entirely convinced I know whether its me, or whether its me so long as others are happy with the content… could there be a need here for social media rights? A set of protections to prevent a drastic response to flippant remarks?

I want to add finally that I am not talking about blatant critical, obscene, defamatory, racist remarks here. I can see how these damage an employer by association 7. I’m talking about the grey ones in the middle – simple differences of opinion, interpretation and the right to freedom of expression. Where do you draw the lines?

Notes:

  1. IT REALLY IS! JUST BE EXTRA DOUBLY CLEAR: THIS ISNT BASED ON A REAL EVENT! I thought in the spirit of this post I should avoid ambiguity at the get go :) ↩
  2. Not that I have one to own ↩
  3. or at least how I say it ^^ ↩
  4. and often neglected ↩
  5. who would never say anything in disagreement with his employer ↩
  6. who might disagree with his employer personally but not let that interfere with work ↩
  7. though generally I think that these are unacceptable regardless of employment ↩

Packtypes: Just another dog in the pack?

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So as part of ongoing change in the Policy and Transformation team that I work in, 1 the old team Tinker 2 has arrived and rolled up with a ‘let’s build a new team, let’s transform the way we work, let’s get to know our colleagues‘ cart. I actually always welcome tinkering with an open mind as it usually presents an opportunity to move in a potentially new, innovative direction 3 and to contribute thoughts usually held at the back of my head!

Packtypes Logo

Packtypes logo

One of the opportunities we’ve identified for developing the teamwork side of things is to consider how well we know each other, what our personalities are like and how we might communicate with each other better. It’s the typical Myers-Briggs ‘understand yourself, understand your colleagues‘ type scenario.

We’ve chosen to use ‘Packtypes‘ for our team which is an approach to personality assessment / emotional intelligence that promises a lot 4 and delivers it all through a tiny deck of cards.

Essentially instead of going through a detailed psychometric questionnaire, the cards themselves are used to determine the type of person you are, expressed via the dazzling metaphor of some rather haggered looking dogs. I think it’s based on Jungian psychology (though the book never really explains the science – therefore failing to reach at least one of the ‘packtypes’ it promotes).

Step out of the curtain for second

I should probably say here that I don’t have any clue about copyright here 5 so I may be stepping on the wrong strand of the web by discussing it but hey, I only plan to discuss the process and my own results and I certainly don’t plan to completely criticise (or praise) the approach so i’m hoping they might let me off a little! 6. I also won’t go beyond the surface detail of the profile just in case.

Back to Packypes.

The deck of cards contains 64 positive words describing a personality trait like ‘enthusiastic’ or ‘challenging’. Each word is associated with an image of a specific breed of dog, printed on the reverse of the card. Each breed or ‘packtype 7‘ is associated with specific personality traits. The deck comes with a book on how to make sense of it all.

One type of Packtypes pack

One type of Packtypes pack

With that in mind, the process of determining the ‘type’ of person you are works like this:

  1. Take the pack of cards with the words facing towards you.
  2. Select 12 words that best describe you in your chosen role (e.g. the ‘work’ you, the ‘home’ you, the ‘blogger’ you.)
  3. Turn the cards over to find the 12 pictures of packtypes with their corresponding breed.
  4. Sum the packtypes by breed (e.g. 4 hounds 8, 4 retrievers, 4 mongrels 9)
  5. Interpret your horoscope reading using one 10 of the helpful books.

I jest with that last point. I found that the process really is quite interesting to do, and unlike a horoscope it was uncannily accurate. I’m sceptical by nature, so I became a little suspicious that the pack was designed in a way so that every reading will result in that uncannilly accurate feeling. However, it turns out you can also ‘packtype’ other people 11 so we tried this in one of the team meetings.

I packtyped my colleague and somewhat surprisingly, despite choosing a completely different set of words, the profile turned out very similiar. He did the same to me and again, a broadly similiar result to my own self assessment. Perhaps not so easily dismissed then.

I know you are, you said you are, so what am I?

So i’m sure your now itching to know 12: what type of person was I? That, my friend is a story for another day though…

Ar, ok go on then. Having followed the process I came out with the following 12 words: analytical, imaginative, enthusiastic, resourceful, caring, considered, original, rational, principled, genuine, understanding, trusting. I turned the cards over 13, and was quite surprised with the initial results. The book says that numbers are important, so in order of size I came out with 3 Coachdogs, 2 Retrievers, 2 Pointers, 2 Hounds, 1 Mastiff, 1 Terrier, 1 Sheepdog. A very varied mix!

But what does it mean?

A good question! The book suggests you ignore the 1′s (At least to begin with). So in order of relevance:

  • Coachdog (my dominant influence): Relationships, empowerment, consensus
  • Pointer (lesser influence): Analysis, facts, working out the right answer
  • Hound (lesser influence): Creativity, ideas and unearthing new opportunities.
  • Retriver (lesser influence): Process, Principles, Trust and continuous improvement

The book also comes with a neat diagram reflecting where these breeds lie on an axis of facts and certainty through to new ideas and risk taking, or people and emotion through to results and action. You can use it to map where your personality supposedly sits as each dog lies in a given position. I sketched mine on my phone.

Packtypes Me

That blob is the me inside of me

Surprising to me, I spanned a wide range on the diagram. It suggests that the people element is really important to me, that I ground myself in facts and certainty but that I am still open to new ideas and risk taking. If you want to communicate with me you should go with the benefits to people first, though it helps to be a new idea, and be grounded in robust research.

The risk taking / new ideas side is relatively new to me. I will secretly admit to having done packtypes before and previously I very much fell in the bottom left corner. So it has changed since that time. I wonder how much the new aspects have come from my recent attempts to grow?

 

This is the great thing that I like in packtypes. You are free to redo it, to learn new things, to change yourself and redo it. Want to be more results/action? Feel free to make your way there. So long as ultimately you remain honest to yourself when picking the cards it should be reflective.

Overall this time I do think it’s feasibly accurate assessment of my broad personality. I look forward to doing it again at some stage.

A few extra thoughts

In discussions with my colleague we agreed that there was a lot of subjectivity in choosing the words. I interpreted ‘challenging’ in an entirely different way for example. There are also complexities around priming (what happened before you packtyped?), avoidance (would you really call yourself ‘inspirational’?), and team pressures (do you want to pick words in front of your colleagues?).

So that is packtypes in a very brief nutshell

I’ve purposely avoided getting into the depth of it in this post. I think that its only fair that packtypes get to keep their hard earned copyright. At £40 a pack on their public facing store though, it’s there to try and it sort of fits to me in the very nice – ‘cheap enough not to dissapoint if it’s a gimmick, but if it does deliver then it will pay itself back the world over‘ area. Do you really need a pack of cards to transform your relationships? Probably not. Is it fun and interesting to try? Yes, it is! Will it help me in my work? Most definitely. I’ve already got my manager begging for his dinner 14.

Notes:

  1. Soon to be Corporate Development & Engagement Team though that’s unconfirmed and may change (I actually like it more I think) ↩
  2. “A tinker’s debt is always paid: Once for any simple trade. Twice for freely-given aid. Thrice for any insult made.” – Patrick Rothfuss ↩
  3. innovation doesn’t happen without space ↩
  4. actually it promises an awful lot – like transforming your entire existence from it’s clearly boring one to your potentially awesome, better, one ↩
  5. any weekly blog clubbers want to take up a challenge to lay out the rules? ↩
  6. Seriously – if you are a copyright terrier you are welcome to contact me if discussing this is not allowed. I will amend, obfuscate, remove or otherwise! ↩
  7. it is just a metaphor so associations with real dogs should really be avoided ↩
  8. If you get 12 hounds, Elvis appears to sing a classic ↩
  9. Not really a packtype ↩
  10. yes, there’s more than one! You can get books specifically for parenting, teaching too ↩
  11. You can packtype anything apparently. Like a block of tasty cheese ↩
  12. either that or fleas ↩
  13. a little apprehensively to be honest, there’s always the worry that your results might disturb you I think. ↩
  14. come on! it had to end with a bad dog joke! ↩

Train-ing to overcome.

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[Note: This blog will sometimes contain more personally reflective articles. Feel free to not read. To fly over with your RSS reader. To avert thine digital eyes and wait for the other stuff. Otherwise, carry on.]

Today I will take a train.

This may seem a somewhat normal thing, trivial even. Certainly not a topic attached to significance for most of us. So perhaps I should probably start by way of an explanation…

Why does this post exist?

This post exists because I have a genetic condition.  Over the course of my existence this condition, the results of a very tiny mutation of my DNA, has come to define me as much as I define myself. Some people move forward through rejection of their afflictions, “Look beyond this. This is not me,” but I have chosen to move forward by embracing it, “This is not the only me, but it is an important part of me.” This condition has shaped who I have become as much as anything else that my upbringing, my experiences and my curiosities have subjected me too.

This condition is called Muscular Dystophy. If you don’t know what Muscular Dystrophy is, it is essentially a genetic mutation which results in a lack of, or malformation of, a protein which is needed to maintain healthy muscle tissue.

For me this has been a slow process through which I have lost the ability to walk, and over a longer time am losing the ability to do more and more.

None of that is the point of this post. It is just the explanation for it’s existence. It is there simply to say that the train has never felt a straightforward choice for me. I came to terms with my condition a long time ago, battling my way past a heart full of fire and a head full of fear. I live a very happy existence 1  with a wonderful family around me.

“It feels sometimes an external thing, a purposeful thing that is being done to me rather than simply happening. I often find the universe pushes in directions I don’t always want to go. If I am to change this and choose my own path I must find a way to try and overcome this irationality.”

By way of explanation then, I am not a functional human being in the physical sense.

the Scene is Set, back to the point!

The point of this post is that I have been trying to grow recently. I have been making time within myself to accept that my limitations are a part of me and that they can be an asset rather than a deficit. I feared them before I think, I let myself get away with a somewhat weaker, perhaps slightly lazy, aspect which allowed others to help me, to carry me forward in the current, rather than to use it as a force to drive onward 2. This blog is one part of trying to grow, as is stepping out of my comfort zone and into a slightly bigger world…

“If I am to succeed, I must force myself to rethink how I operate in a world built for people that are not like me.”

So when I was recently asked to attend a meeting in Manchester 3, I found myself asking different questions 4 than I usually would. My usual routes here would be to look for family members to support me, to catch a lift in that direction and to catch one back, or even just to avoid altogether. Sometimes this makes sense and will continue to do so, but my new question, something i’d generally discount, was: “is this an opportunity to try the train again?”

A brief stop to remember.

Just so you can understand the mental alarms that rang in my head with this question, my previous experience with trains was way back in 1995ish. Travelling in a wheelchair in 1995 was, to put it mildly, ‘a total flippin nightmare 5.’ Things went wrong, carriages were awkward, tiny. Toilets were impossible. People forgot you were coming half the time. The only way it worked was to travel with somebody. The train just never made sense to me as an option.

Basingstoke and Deane 159004 at Exeter St DavidsA visual oxymoron? (Note that this wasn’t the train I used)

Back to the floor

So a little later on, when it came up again as a discussion with my manager. I suggested the train. It seemed a good idea and I went with it. I would go on my own on a train and back again. I wasn’t sure what I expected the reaction would be, I imagined in my head concern perhaps some doubt in there, a little redirection maybe 6. However, on top form, he simply said ‘ok.’ 7.

Booking the tickets took me through a rather long and winding conversation, mainly me asking for every bit of information possible about boarding, wheelchair seating, dimensions of the toilet, whether the doors are automated 8.

Ok job done, train agreed, tickets booked, meeting confirmed. Easy.

Well no, not quite

A few days later I had another discussion over the phone. This had started to take a different path. It started sort of like this:

“Hi John, how are things”

“Ok, a bit nervous, anxious about taking the train you know. I keep thinking of all the things that can go wrong but that really that misses the point.”

And on it went. A little bit of anxiety had crept in, a little fear. The call continued with me identifying problems and issues, but ultimately remembering why I was doing this, finding grounding again again and moving on:

“I was thinking, thinking back to you know, what we discussed, earlier. In the team meeting,  about the two scenarios. About, about operating on the worst case, when actually the reality case is probably not that bad. I keep thinking, well that really, what is the very worst thing that could happen? But then I think, back in reality, there really is no case, no, you know, situation that I wouldn’t be able to resolve on my own. I mean I have a phone, and there will be people everywhere.” 9

I suppose this is the real point of this story. If it is anything, It is this: a little voice lives in your head somewhere. It is a quiet one for some of us. It says, “go” when the louder voice says, “stop.” It says, “why not?” when the louder voice says, “oh no!”. That little voice is worth listening to once in a while and it is the voice I am trying to listen to more.

And don’t get me wrong. I don’t consider myself anything like knowledgeable on dealing with adversity, or fear, or caution. This is just what I learned and this blog exists to leak these things 10.

I wish I could, I wish I could, am I the only one who thinks I should?

Another obstacle overcome then. Another chance to ditch the idea skipped. Now I wish I could say that I spent last night sleeping soundly. I wish I could say that after deciding to live by the little voice and not the big one, the reality case and not the worst case, that I didn’t wake up this morning with a belly full of marbles. It would be a lie. A huge big lie.

It’s taken some serious attempt at willpower to drive me to this point. I’m surprised I made it this far to be completely honest. I am forcing myself over the edge, a little frightened of falling. Nobody said growing was going to be easy though.

Onward, upward, downward, skyward. Don’t look down please.

I still don’t know too. I still don’t know what will happen. Perhaps I will discover that my condition prevents this attempt at independence. Perhaps I will meet obstacles I hadn’t thought of. But I will challenge my assumption first and perhaps I might just find that the world is a little less intimidating than it sometimes seems.

Today I took the train… 11 12.

“I think I have a solution. It is simple really. I will dare myself to step forward each time and challenge the world to stop me each time. This is how I will train myself to overcome.”

 

Notes:

  1. Certainly much happier than some! ↩
  2. Practically, I accept that some of this must remain. There are just some things I cannot do. ↩
  3. Somewhat ironically, on asset based community development which considers assets before deficits ↩
  4. yet again! First an unconference, then a blog, then this. Whatever next? ↩
  5. It really was! ↩
  6. better solutions ↩
  7. Sometimes good management is not trying to manage at all ↩
  8. Panicked, clawing, me? Never… ↩
  9. I have a terrible habit of transcribing myself ↩
  10. Thanks to Phil Jewitt for the leaking terminology. It fits well! ↩
  11. And, for anyone who cares to know, it was absolutely fine! Like being 6 again! ↩
  12. and, for anyone who is all about the detail, the meeting was on ABCD and I met some really quite interesting people ↩