Month: June 2021

For those who know me and not just in a work or acquaintance scenario will know i have a few physical scars. The first is on my head from a childhood injury. This is a bit of story but hard to see unless my hair is cut really short. The second are on both of my shins, something I got as an adult. These are the results of 2 bouts with staph infections. Apparently I am very apt to get it, and on my shins where there is very little blood flow they seem to flourish.

There were incredibly painful when I got them, and in many cases the original diagnosis was wrong. Which probably didn’t help matters, strange both happen to hamper vacations. The scars look bad, and often i think the infection is going to come back as they do not look healed.

Well for some reason I am self conscious about the scars. I prefer to wear pants over shorts, and if I wear shorts i wear socks. Even places where i need to put a bathing suit on, I think twice before doing. Now if I am comfortable with you, and or I know you have seen it before I don’t care as much. But in public settings, parties or places where I am not comfortable with showing my scars, I avoid doing so. Lucky at work I wear pants and no idea what i would do if it was wear shorts to work day.

Recently I have been wondering why. My wife Sheila had surgery on her stomach when she was a baby, and had a scar there she was very self conscious about. She always wanted plastic surgery to cover it up. When she wore bathing suits it was always on piece or one that covered her stomach. I knew her issue with it, never challenged her, never asked her to do anything different. I some how wonder if that self consciousness she had somehow subconsciously got into my head. That my scars are something that should not be seen.

We all have scars, some visible and some not. And these scars are signs of survival. Signs that we faced a challenge and made it thru. Some people have less, smaller, some have more and larger. Some are in hidden spots and some are right out in the open. Those who scars run deep (not physical) are only exposed when something happens or someone asks a probing question. Some like mine can be hidden with some work, others cannot. For those who don’t have a choice, they live with it, live with someone looking, some staring, and some wondering what happened.

Mine are in a interesting spot. I have the ability to hide them in most settings, but can also hide them almost all times. Previously I have chose to. I am making the mental decision today not to do it anymore. I should realize my life although has been easy at some parts, been challenging during others. I struggled with some things which my mom used the expression “temporary inconvenience” or “minor hurdle.” No matter how difficult it really was, there was nothing too hard.

My wife used the expression “We got this…” This is the first thing my daughter said when she realized her mom had passed away. The scar of losing her mom will be hidden but there. That scar is one that has also healed as best it can, and only when people have dug deep do they see it. But we have survived that, I have survived other difficult challenges – physical, emotional and mental. But guess what I am still standing, you are still standing. If someone asks you how you got the scar, you can be open and let them know. I intend not to cover mine up, I have healed physically, and have healed mentally (and in both cases got help). Don’t let your scars define you, let them be be like notches on your bed post, signs of victory.

This opinion is mine, and mine only, my current or former employers have nothing to do with it. I do not write for any financial gain, I do not take advertising and any product company listed was not done for payment. But if you do like what I write you can donate to the charity I support (with my wife who passed away in 2017) Morgan Stanley’s Children’s Hospital or donate to your favorite charity. I pay to host my site out of my own pocket, my intention is to keep it free.  I do read all feedback, I mostly wont post any of them

This Blog is a labor of love, and was originally going to be a book.  With the advent of being able to publish yourself on the web I chose this path.  I will write many of these and not worry too much about grammar or spelling (I will try to come back later and fix it) but focus on content.  I apologize in advance for my ADD as often topics may flip.  I hope one day to turn this into a book and or a podcast, but for now it will remain a blog. 

My daughter got sucked into Hockey (its really a cult) and you don’t dabble in hockey. Once you get involved in youth hockey, it really is all consuming. I think more sports have gone this way, but my experience is with hockey. What I mean by sucked in, is that you start with say a learn to play, maybe do a house league (single rink kids of same age play against each other) and a year or two later you spend your vacation days traveling to multiple states for tournaments every few weekends abandoning your house. You will spend time on training, 1-1 lessons, group lesson etc. It is an endless money pit.

But all of this is structured training. Each of the classes are supervised by a coach, have specific drills, and goals. As a trained coach from USA Hockey, they gave us drills to work on, even sample practice plans. These are great, in fact by taking the coaching certificate I had a new appreciation of coaches in general. I stopped coaching when my daughter was young as she stopped listening to me, but I continued to go thru the levels of coaching. I actually wish there was a parent class, would help parents really understand what is going on.

This structured class is great, your kids learn to skate with the right stride, learn to do crossovers, get on edges pass and shoot. But this is all book learning, this is all what people have done before. When teachers are watching the students work to show they have learned the skill, follow the lesson. So they become not robots, but definitely not trying something very creative. And strange when we watch a game we see the best players do something insane, mind blowing, and say how the hell did he think of doing that.

For years I was told that Canadian players were better in hockey cause its there national game (No it was not created there, in fact lacrosse is the only sport created in Canada.). But as I got older, what I learned is what great players in Canada did was play a lot of unstructured hockey. They would play “pond” hockey with their friends, without coaching, without parent supervision, without ‘structure.” When you are playing without a coach correcting you, you may be willing to try something that isn’t taught. You may try a move that isn’t in the books. This unstructured play is how you create, it is how you do something different. No one ever wrote a song sitting next to a teacher correcting them.

It is this combination of structured and unstructured learning that brings out the best. But unfortunately we focus on structure. We focus on the Gladwell 10,000 hours. The more we do something, the more training, the better we will be at it. We need to practice the precise movements over and over again. But to me that only gets you good and what you practice. We forget that the best stuff comes from experimenting. That nothing new has been discovered by doing the same thing over again. And often that will not happen if someone is correcting you (coach.)

When I hire people for technology, I like resumes that have a git hub link of stuff they did on their own. Just this week I was reading a resume and someone wrote his own chess program with an AI. I immediately want to talk. to that person. They are doing “unstructured” programming – for themselves. No manager telling them what do do, what libraries to use, they get to experiment. We spend too much time working on structure, we need people to become creative.

This opinion is mine, and mine only, my current or former employers have nothing to do with it. I do not write for any financial gain, I do not take advertising and any product company listed was not done for payment. But if you do like what I write you can donate to the charity I support (with my wife who passed away in 2017) Morgan Stanley’s Children’s Hospital or donate to your favorite charity. I pay to host my site out of my own pocket, my intention is to keep it free.  I do read all feedback, I mostly wont post any of them

This Blog is a labor of love, and was originally going to be a book.  With the advent of being able to publish yourself on the web I chose this path.  I will write many of these and not worry too much about grammar or spelling (I will try to come back later and fix it) but focus on content.  I apologize in advance for my ADD as often topics may flip.  I hope one day to turn this into a book and or a podcast, but for now it will remain a blog. 

For the longest time I have heard the expression Failure is not an option. In fact it is the key moment from the Apollo 13 move. (Scene here -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tid44iy6Rjs ) But for some reason that attitude and theory falls short. Although I can say the ultimate end state is to succeed but not allowing failure, or even acknowledging failure what are we doing?

Take the Wright Brothers. Did they succeed in flying the first time? I doubt it. They learned from their failures and improved the design to finally get flight. They actually started with Kites and ways to bend the wings to control flight. They continued to improve which each new kite they built. Once they had the kite working, it gave them inspiration that they could create powered flight. Unfortunately the only notes of failure were the two attempts before the final successful day. Even that day, they failed 4 times before successfully flying. Lost in their success is the number of attempts, the changes made, the lessons learned at each step of the way. Their failures led to their success.

Let us take Walter Owen Bentley (yes of the Bentley Brothers and Bentley Automobiles) who was inspired to make a lighter piston based on a paper weight. After dozens of attempts to make aluminum piston and failing he chose to combine aluminum with copper to finally make a light weight piston. No notes remain for how many attempts and different metals he tried. But if he didn’t succeed we would not have light weight pistons (until someone else tried) His failures led to success.

In both cases these great people looked at what they were doing, tried something and then made changes to finally come with a solution that worked. Failure was an option, in fact failure was a necessary option. Without their failures they would have never learned what does not work. Bruce Lee (yes I will quote him again) “Don’t fear failure – Not failure but low aim is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious to fail”.

So why don’t we “celebrate” failures. When I was a child there was the open video for the wide world of supports where they talked about the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv368yWOSas go to the 16 second mark.. This is the one time I see it celebrated, it some strange way everyone saw this and was excited to see it. In auto racing you hear the notion that people watch for the crashes (failures) more than for the win. But how can we figure out how to let people who are trying, it is ok to fail. To let people take risks and let the fail without consequences. Do you think Apple got everything right first? And every product was successful. There are websites dedicated to Googles graveyard (of projects) they killed.

Lastly my thought is about looking at failure. As stated above Bentley and the Wright Brothers learned from their failures and made changes, but is there a time when failure should lead to no change? Is there a time when you fail at something, and it is not about changing but trying again? Take the time you learned to walk, you fell a lot. You did not re-invent the way walking is done, you just got up and tried it again. Eventually your muscles and brains kicked in and you were successful. So it is not “failure” has to bring change, but failure should be celebrated as a precursor to success.

Having failed a lot I guess I learn often what doesn’t work, but my failures always seem to bring a way to succeed. And I am still learning when I need to change something or I just need to try again. Persistence and knowing when to change and what to change leads to success.

This opinion is mine, and mine only, my current or former employers have nothing to do with it. I do not write for any financial gain, I do not take advertising and any product company listed was not done for payment. But if you do like what I write you can donate to the charity I support (with my wife who passed away in 2017) Morgan Stanley’s Children’s Hospital or donate to your favorite charity. I pay to host my site out of my own pocket, my intention is to keep it free.  I do read all feedback, I mostly wont post any of them

This Blog is a labor of love, and was originally going to be a book.  With the advent of being able to publish yourself on the web I chose this path.  I will write many of these and not worry too much about grammar or spelling (I will try to come back later and fix it) but focus on content.  I apologize in advance for my ADD as often topics may flip.  I hope one day to turn this into a book and or a podcast, but for now it will remain a blog.