Today's Meditation on Being a Father

I'll say it right off the bat: being a father can be aggravating at times. My son Brendon, who is nearly 17 months old now and has started walking, has apparently been studying ways to push my buttons and send me from 0 to upset in under 6 seconds.

That mischievous smile he gives me right as he's about to tip my drink over on purpose.

The umpteenth time he tries to climb over the back of the couch and kill himself, giggling as we save him from himself.

His habit of getting into the DVD cabinet and throwing the cases all over the living room, or even opening a case so he can get a disc out and scratch it up.

The way he insists on cramming food into his mouth until he chokes, no matter how many times it's happened before.

Those little tantrums where he just throws the nearest available object in a huff.

The public crying/screaming fits where he is completely inconsolable and causes a scene, probably making people wonder if I'm hurting him or something.

Arggghh!

But sometimes, he'll do something so simple and affectionate that it makes all the frustration worth it. This morning was like that.

My wife was in the shower and Brendon was still asleep, so for a few brief moments, I had a quiet house all to myself. I like to take advantage of these moments to do a little morning meditation and think about the upcoming day.

I was sitting on the living room floor cross-legged, focused on my breathing, when Brendon walked into the room, apparently having just woken up and climbed down from the bed without crying for Mommy or Daddy (which is unusual). He looked me in the eye, turned around, sat down in my lap, and leaned back against me.

He said nothing, made no noises, didn't bring any toys to play with, didn't bug me to give him a drink...he just sat there with me and we enjoyed the quiet together for a minute. Of course, he eventually got restless and shuffled away to go play with something noisy, but I cherished that single minute more deeply than any anger he's ever caused me.

Moments like that are why I became a father.

'The Good, Racist People' →

Ta-Nehisi Coates, in an NYT op-ed:

“I am trying to imagine a white president forced to show his papers at a national news conference, and coming up blank. I am trying to a imagine a prominent white Harvard professor arrested for breaking into his own home, and coming up with nothing. I am trying to see Sean Penn or Nicolas Cage being frisked at an upscale deli, and I find myself laughing in the dark. It is worth considering the messaging here. It says to black kids: “Don’t leave home. They don’t want you around.” It is messaging propagated by moral people.”

It's disheartening to know that racism is still this prevalent in our society. As a white male and lifelong Oklahoman, I've never been the direct target of racism but I've been a witness to more of it than I care to remember.

I grew up around the kinds of rednecks who proudly displayed the Confederate flag on their trucks, or went into the military so they could exact revenge on "towel-heads" after the events of 9/11. There are still parts of town white people won't venture into at night, assuming they'll be instantly mugged at gunpoint.

A friend of our family, who happens to live in an upper-class area, once had the misfortune of attending a neighborhood meeting where people were upset about the black family that had just moved in. Apparently they thought the family was bringing down the property value of the area.

My own grandfather—who was a great man in other respects—was always extremely prejudiced towards black people. The best compliment I ever heard him give to a black person went something like, "At least he ain't lazy like other [n-word]s." When he found out that I had a crush on a black girl in high school, he told me matter-of-factly that I wouldn't be allowed to bring her over to visit. I never asked her out.

The realist in me understands that these kinds of racial prejudices will be around for many more generations, but the idealist in me yearns to see the day where they are a thing of the past.

The Coolest Experience I Had as an Apple Store Employee

It was a particularly busy day, which is a bit of an understatement. I don't quite remember which product had just released that morning, but it was the kind of thing that had attracted a long line of campers outside the entrance the night before. The store was so packed it felt like working inside of a sardine can all day.

Somewhere in the middle of this hectic rush, a group of about 15 high school kids came through the door, accompanied by their teacher. It seemed like an odd day to take a field trip to the Apple Store, I thought. My curiosity was piqued though, and since I happened to be free at that moment, I went over to talk to them.

The kids basically ignored me, but the teacher was happy to speak for the group. She said that their school—which sounded to me like a small, upper-class, private institution—was providing one MacBook for each of the students. No Pro models or anything, just the low-end plastic ones. They'd all been given an Apple Store gift card to purchase with, so they would all be rung up individually.

Each student was given the choice of a black or a white 160GB MacBook. I supposed they had all been brought to the Apple Store to check each one out at the last minute and see what they liked best, but it didn't take long for the students to form a line next to the teacher with their minds already made up. And then the teacher walked off to handle a student who was being particularly rowdy.

And then it dawned on me that all of these students were all speaking to one another in sign language.

They were from a school for the deaf.

While the teacher was tied up with the troublemaker, the first student in line began signing something to me. Now, I had taken a 6-week sign language course in high school, but that was years ago and I couldn't remember how to sign much more than "thank you" and the "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother" song (it was our final project, don't ask me why). I had no idea what this kid was saying.

I put my hands up and started doing that thing where I'm mouthing words and kind of adding an airy whisper, you know, the way you might do with someone on the other side of a car door window. I've never really understood why people make that noise, when we know the other person can't hear it.

Anyway, the point is, I was trying my best to communicate to him that I don't speak sign. Once we finally established that, a light bulb went off in my head and I walked him over to the nearest iMac so we could open TextEdit and simply type back and forth. What else was I going to do? It was insanely busy and there was still a line waiting outside the door.

Our text conversation was pretty curt:

-how are you doing?

good

-cool. so you're wanting a macbook?

yeah i like the white one

-ok

and so it went until he had paid for his MacBook and the next student stepped up. I had a version of this text conversation with every single one of these kids. I suppose I could have been more efficient by getting all their MacBooks at once, but instead I ended up walking back and forth between the sales floor and the stock room to grab each one individually.

It wouldn't occur to me until later that the teacher could have jumped in as translator at any point after I had rung up the first kid, but she chose to let me communicate with the students via text messages on a screen instead. I remember thinking that we could have saved a lot of time and effort, but I wasn't too perturbed by it or anything.

I mean, the kids were mostly friendly, and it was an overall enjoyable experience. Kinda fun, actually. It was certainly a nice distraction from the other craziness going on that day. Eventually, all the students had their MacBooks and were saying their "thank yous" in sign as they left.

This is the point where the story should have ended, in my mind. But fast-forward a few hours, when the craziness in the store had died down a little and we were finally being allowed to start staggering our lunch breaks. When my break time rolled around, I headed to the food court upstairs (did I mention my Apple Store was in a mall?) to grab some grub.

You know who was sitting at a big table together up there? You guessed it, the group of students and their teacher. But...imagine my surprise when they were all talking to each other out loud, no more sign language involved.

I must've stood there dumbfounded for several seconds before one of the students pointed me out. The teacher turned around, laughed at the look on my face, and got up to come talk to me about what I was seeing. She explained that none of the kids were actually deaf, although the part about their school getting them MacBooks was true.

Apparently, the teacher had decided to turn this outing into a strange assignment/experiment. The idea was for the group of kids to spend the entire day at the mall, going store-to-store and behaving as if they were deaf to see how employees treated them. After explaining all of this, the teacher told me that almost every single store they'd visited had treated them a bit terribly. As if they were annoyed that they had to deal with all these "deaf" kids and preferred to be finished with them as soon as possible.

The next part of her story made me feel awesome inside: She said that I was the only person they worked with all day that had treated them like real people, and actually tried to be as helpful as the situation allowed. They had all been impressed with my idea of using TextEdit to communicate, because nobody else in the mall had even bothered to grab a pen and some paper.

The students got to learn a real lesson about how the world treats those who are a little different, and I got a bunch of hugs and handshakes in return, along with a few tears shed all around. They even bought my lunch! We sat around and chatted for a while before I had to go back to work, and we exchanged a few more hugs before I left. I haven't seen any of those kids since but they all seemed like a good bunch so I'm sure they're all doing well somewhere.

It was one of the most feel-good, warm and fuzzy experiences I've ever had, and I will remember it forever.

---

Update: Wow, I really didn't expect this story to blow up the way it has. I've never had anything voted up on Hacker News before, much less gain the top spot. I'm still not convinced it hasn't all been a fever-dream.

The generally positive response I've been getting from readers all evening has been incredible. I've received tons of emails/tweets/ADN posts from people who have been kind enough to share their similar stories with me. Many of them are far more touching than what I published here today and deserve all this attention more than I do.

Tonight has been a strange, wonderful, exciting, nerve-wracking experience. I'm not sure I can ever express my gratitude for all the support I've received. Thank you, everyone.

Now, here is a picture of my son looking super smug for your enjoyment:

My Path to the iPad

Time for another piece about my personal life! Apologies in advance if you're getting sick of these :)

As I stated recently, I've been wanting to overhaul the tech situation in my life for a while now. To recap: despite having been an Apple Store employee a while back (October '07 - December '08), and having access to decent discounts on Mac products at that time, I've never been able to comfortably afford an iMac or MacBook. Also, long-term budgeting for big tech purchases isn't something I have much experience with.

You see, I grew up in a humble mobile home (albeit a double-wide model) which was on a dirt road at the outskirts of a small town. Because of the location, the only internet connection available my whole life was 56K dial-up. It wasn't until after I moved out in my early 20s that my parents could even get a basic DSL line run to the house. (My dad now uses that connection to play World of Warcraft, which sure is...something.)

Needless to say, we weren't big computer purchasers. There wasn't much of a reason to be, honestly. I mean, we were using AOL as our ISP, with all the requisite dialup noises that were enough of a deterrent alone. Of course, this means that I missed out on a lot during Web 2.0's heyday, but overall I think it was probably a good thing because it forced me into a not-overly-consumerist mindset that is still a big part of who I am today.

My first Apple purchase only came about when I managed to scrape together enough money to pick up an iPhone 3G several months after it released. Rather than upgrading every year, I waited three years before picking up an iPhone 4S (which is still my current phone), and that's where my Apple product history ended until Friday.

When I think back on this stuff, it seems odd even to me that I would ever have thought to apply for a job at Apple, given that my only prior experiences with Macs were with the old machines at my elementary and junior high schools, and those were mostly used for playing Oregon Trail or Math Munchers. I had no real sense of what a Mac could do outside of playing games.

Let's just say I had a lot of learning to do.

To this day I've still never owned a Mac, but I certainly developed a strong interest in them while working at the Apple Store, and nearly all of the tech blogs I keep up with even now are pretty Apple-oriented.

After my cheapy Windows 7 laptop crapped out, I didn't bother replacing it with another cheap Windows machine because I was too busy salivating over the 15" MacBook Pro model of the time (not literally you guys, ew). And I still couldn't even afford that computer without cutting out a ton of other expenses and living on ramen noodles for a year or two. Didn't seem worth it at the time.

The iPad had become pretty popular by this point, but the thought of replacing a laptop with such a device seemed crazy to me. My thoughts at the time sounded something like this: "It looks nice and all, but how could it possibly do all the things I want?"

The answer wouldn't begin to hit me for several months. Many people were proclaiming the iPad as the device to lead us into a post-PC era, but deep down I never believed them. Surely they couldn't be serious.

But then, more and more people started making the switch, ditching their old MacBooks (or other laptops) and instead preferring instead to carry around an iPad exclusively, often with a physical keyboard setup. This happened to be around the time I started taking a serious interest in writing, so something in the back of my mind began to wonder if I'd been enturely wrong about the iPad.

Then, Shawn Blanc published a piece explaining how his iPad had all but replaced his MacBook Air as a mobile workstation, and Federico Viticci began writing a series of articles showcasing the ways iOS apps can work together to complete fairly complex tasks with minimal input from the user. Lots of other writers got in on the fun as well, but there are far too many to list here.

Eventually, I became convinced by these kinds of testimonials. The iPad started looking more and like a suitable and legitimate replacement for a laptop, although admittedly, it couldn't have gotten there without the help of the App Store.

The abundance of 3rd-party writing and productivity apps has created an environment where people can accomplish just about anything they want as long as they've got the right app(s) and they're willing to work within the inherent limitations of iOS. As it turns out, a large and ever-growing population of people are perfectly willing to do just that. It was quite a recurring theme throughout 2012 in fact.

Fast-forward to today. I've been at my full-time job for 4.5 years and I've got a few pay raises under my belt. My wife's Irish dance school has slowly been growing and she's got a decent number of students now. We're still not making a ton of money by any stretch, and I've grown of tired my dead-end day job, but we're at least living a little more comfortably now than our previous years of living paycheck-to-paycheck.

Several months ago, my wife and I decided that we would finally try to invest in the Apple ecosystem and we began budgeting ourselves pretty strictly. The goal was to set aside a little extra money each month after we'd paid the bills and put money into our emergency fund. We weren't always successful but over time we've managed to build up a decent-sized 'Apple Fund'. Eventually, the question became: which devices do we need, exactly?

With the iPad's newfound role as a legitimate computer replacement, it seemed feasible for each of us to get one of those for mobile use and then get an iMac for the house at some point. I considered this scenario in my previous piece:

"If we've got an always-on iMac powering things at home, we could feasibly do the iPad thing and have no problems at all. She doesn't care about getting into the nerdy stuff, and most of my usage will probably be reading and writing, so really it just comes down to how much I want to tinker with scripts and stuff on the go."

I've since decided that having the ability to tinker with scripts just isn't worth the additional expense to me. Like I said, my main uses for it will be reading and writing. An iPad is well-suited to (and more than capable of) accomplishing those tasks, and even with the additional purchase of a keyboard/case it's still cheaper than buying a MacBook Air. Plus, I can always do that sort of thing on the iMac whenever we decide to get one.

So, I took the day off work yesterday and went back to visit ye olde Apple Store. After playing around with the various iPads one last time, I went ahead and picked up a 16GB wifi-only iPad 4 w/ Retina display. I'm still a big fan of how light and portable the iPad mini is, but the bigger Retina display won out in the end.

Now that I've finally made a decision after months of consideration, what do I think about the end result? Well, I've been spending the better part of 72 hours toying with this thing and it already feels like I made the correct choice.

I still have yet to get a physical keyboard, but I've already done some writing on the device (in fact, I'm writing this piece on it right now) and it's been a sheer joy so far. I'll probably never reach 90-100WPM using the on-screen keyboard like I can on a physical keyboard (HUMBLEBRAG FULLY INTENDED), but it's noticeably easier to write with than the iPhone keyboard I've grown accustomed to these past few years.

I want to mention just how friggin' beautiful the Retina display is on this thing. I've found myself becoming lost in photo blogs, Vimeo videos and comic books. All apps just look nicer than their iPhone counterparts. Even the text I write is rendered gorgeously. Talk about encouragement to write more!

I'm also in love with a couple of the multitouch gestures:

1) "Pinch" the screen with 5 fingers to exit an app to the homescreen. I don't have to care where the home button is in relation to the iPad's orientation.

2) Swipe up with 4 fingers to bring up the app switcher tray. Much better than double-clicking the home button.

These are completely natural-feeling interactions and my workflow already feels 10x better just from using such simple gestures.

So that's where my tech situation is at right now. I will continue to gradually add new things into the mix, such as a keyboard and some sort of bag to carry this stuff around in. The iMac will be further down the line, hopefully before the end of 2013.

I'm only getting started but I'm already super excited about all this. Not to suddenly get all "consumerism is the bee's knees!" about it, but after going through life without a lot of nice things to my name, it feels nice to treat myself for a change.

Viticci: 1 -- Cancer: 0

Earlier this week, Federico Viticci announced via Twitter that his PET cancer scan came back negative, meaning that for now he has a clean bill of health. He's been posting updates about his treatments for a while now, and I've been rooting for him from the sidelines because I think he's a great guy and I enjoy his work over at MacStories.

This morning, he published a piece on his personal blog, expanding on that tweet. My favorite bit:

"To the oncologist who told me I couldn’t survive: fuck you."

Well said!

In response to Federico's blog post, Greg Pierce, the developer of one of my favorite apps, wrote about his own experiences with cancer 22 years ago:

"I learned a lot about unconditional love from the incredible support I got from family and friends. I learned even more about courage from the other patients at N.I.H. – most of whom faced much more questionable outcomes than I."

I had no idea Greg had gone through such a thing until today, but I'm just as glad he made it through as I am for Federico.

Nate Boateng also provided some thoughts of his own about how Federico's journey, and that of another close friend, have inspired him:

"You can't get time back, so make it count. This week was a true demonstration in how wonderful, joyous, and horribly unfair life is sometimes. Don't waste it."

Reading all of these guys' posts has really inspired me this morning. I encourage you to go read them as well.

"Hanging Literally by a Thread"

At the end of an interesting piece about meeting his doppelganger, Eric Puchner sits on his daughter's bed to tell her a bedtime story and finds himself contemplating the ephemerality of life:

"If someone told me I was going to die tomorrow, I thought, I would still want to be sitting right here. Because it was going to happen someday—very soon, in fact, in cosmological time—and it mattered immensely where I was. There was no time not to waste."

Words to remember.

Letting Children Fail

Jessica Lahey, writing for The Atlantic:

"These are the parents who worry me the most — parents who won't let their child learn. You see, teachers don't just teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. We teach responsibility, organization, manners, restraint, and foresight. These skills may not get assessed on standardized testing, but as children plot their journey into adulthood, they are, by far, the most important life skills I teach.

Excellent piece, and I recommend reading the whole thing.

This is something I think about often, because I want to avoid being "that" parent. The one who coddles their children, never allowing them to learn from their mistakes and thus creating a sense of entitlement that will set the child up for inevitable failure in adulthood.

It's an easy pattern to slip into, I know. Even now, I sometimes find myself making excuses for Brendon when he's acting bratty. "Oh he's just a baby, he doesn't understand what he's doing." And maybe that's true to a certain extent, but my role is to be a father, not a buddy.

When I see that he's about to hurt himself in some way, my first instinct is to reach out and prevent that thing from happening, but I have to remind myself that sometimes I need to hold back and let the lesson be taught. (Obviously I still step in if the damage is going to be severe.)

At some point he must learn what is right and wrong, and I'm trying to instill these values in him early on so we can avoid the whole "damage control" thing years from now, when it will be too late to reverse any coddling we've done. Is there a better way? I don't know, there was no manual handed to me when I became a dad.

One thing I do know though: it doesn't feel good to tell him no, but it must be done.

Happiness > Money

My wife Chelsea and I recently started adhering to a stricter financial budget than we have in the past. We've assessed what our monthly expenses are, we set a goal for how much we want to transfer into our savings account at the end of each month, and we've started keeping certain spending activities to a minimum.

We rarely eat at restaurants anymore, preferring instead to cook at home and eat the leftovers for lunch the next day. We've opted for a combination of Netflix Instant and Hulu+ rather than paying for cable TV, which is a huge savings. We almost never go to the movies, we just wait for stuff to become available on Netflix, or maybe a Redbox kiosk in a pinch . We don't buy lots of knick-knacks for ourselves or Brendon; we've got plenty enough stuff as it is.

I say all this because yesterday something unusual happened. Chelsea, in a moment of quick decision, spent $40 to buy two sets of Irish dance shoes (hard-shoe and soft-shoe, respectively) for one of her dance students as a birthday present. Now, even our own family members only get birthday/Christmas gifts worth maybe $20, and Chelsea is typically the stricter one when it comes to our budget, so when she told me about this purchase I think she expected me to be upset. But I wasn't upset in the least.

If anything, it made me smile :)

For one thing, those shoes can easily run for over $100 a pair, so $40 to get both pairs at once was a steal. A lady on some obscure dance forum was trying to get rid of the shoes since her daughter had grown out of them, and Chelsea had to act quickly in order to score the deal.

Besides that, the student these shoes are going to—despite being in my wife's class for a few years now and being truly dedicated to it—has never had the opportunity to buy them herself. She comes from a family that's been going through some hard times lately, and it's only because of her love for the class that her parents scrape together enough extra money to keep paying each month.

And that's why I don't mind the sudden purchase my wife made. The reason we're putting money into savings isn't out of some Scrooge-like hoarding greed or anything. We have lots of financial goals we'd like to meet of course, but all of that pales in comparison to the happiness that those dance shoes will bring to that little girl. Forget making her day, this gift will probably make her month or maybe even year.

Isn't that really the more important thing? I certainly think so.

Tips to Overcome Writer's Block

Writer's block is something we all face at some time or another. That frustrating feeling of having this desperate urge to write, but being unable to get the words out. Sometimes it's so bad we can't even think of a topic to write about! After banging our heads against the wall for a while and getting nowhere, we throw in the towel.

(Inevitably, we'll wake up in the middle of the night, suddenly struck by an idea that we must get out of our head immediately or else risk losing it. The human mind sometimes works in mysterious and beautiful ways.)

I've said this before, but I feel that I face this block more often than other writers. That may or may not be true, but try telling me that when I'm in the middle of an agonizing session of futility. I'll probably look at you like you're crazy.

Those magical moments when the words seem to flow effortlessly? They're rare. You can't just sit down with your writing tool of choice—whether that's a typewriter, a laptop, an iPad, or even just pen and paper—and expect the magic to happen. It's not realistic.

Sooner or later you're going to hit that wall, just like everyone else does.

So, how can we overcome this wall? After some trial and error, I've found some ideas that have worked for me, and I thought I'd share them with you guys. I don't claim to be an expert, but maybe this stuff will help you too. That's the goal, anyway.

Tip #1: Exercise

You might ask yourself, "What the heck is this guy on? Exercise? I'm trying to get some writing done, not break a sweat." But I'm completely serious here.

One reason I end up having writer's block sometimes is that my head is too full of information I've absorbed throughout the day. After skimming hundreds (if not thousands) of RSS posts and tweets, not to mention all the fantastic stuff people have been linking to, I find it difficult to focus on my own task at hand.

Our brains aren't really built to process such a river of information every day, and yet I and many others keep doing it. It's an information addiction I'm working to rid myself of.

When I need to clear my head of all that cruft, I simply step away from my laptop and go for a light jog around the neighborhood. Give it a try, it may work wonders for you. Preferably sans-iPhone, so that you're not tempted to put on music or a podcast or whatever. That would defeat the purpose of what we're trying to accomplish here.

During the jog, try not to think about all the stuff you need to get done, or the deadlines you're facing, or the work you failed to finish previously. None of that matters right now. Instead, focus on your breathing. Enjoy your surroundings. Wave at the neighbors. Smile.

By the time you're done, you might just feel more relaxed and have a clearer mind. And if you do, I bet that the words which seemed so far out of reach earlier will come to you more freely.

If exercise really isn't your thing, give meditation a try. You don't even have to leave the house or office. Shut off all distractions, find a comfortable place to sit up straight, close your eyes, breathe slowly and deeply, and try to empty your thoughts of all worries.

Even if it doesn't solve the writer's block, you'll feel tons better.

Tip #2: Photography

Writers are creative thinkers. Whether we know it or not, this tends to translate to having a natural eye for photography. Maybe not true in all cases, but in my experience, some of the best writers I know can produce some incredible photos. These skills seem intertwined as far as I can tell.

So, when the part of your mind that controls word production gets a little worn out, try getting out a camera and taking some photos for a while. Find something you've seen a million times and find a new way to capture it, perhaps using a different perspective.

Engaging a different portion of your artistic side this way can be the spark that ignites your creativity.

It doesn't have to be a DSLR or anything. If you've got a smartphone, chances are you've got something decent to work with. Or maybe you've got an old disposable camera laying around somewhere. As the saying goes, the best camera is the one that's with you.

Tip #3: Writing Assignments

Rather than doing all the work of coming up with a topic to write about, allow someone else to take care of that part for you. Writing assignments are wonderful exercises that can help jump-start your brain and get the creative juices flowing. They can also be done as a warm-up before you get started on your own topic.

A good resource I've found for writing assignments has been over at First Today, Then Tomorrow. There, playwright and author Randy Murray puts up a new practice writing assignment once a week, and they've never failed to get me thinking. Great stuff.

Tip #4: Look to Other Writers for Inspiration

Most of us have writers that we look up to and respect. Chances are, they've written about something that has interested you, or else you probably wouldn't have become a fan in the first place.

If you're struggling to find a topic, get out a book or browse through some of your favorite blogs until you see something you can add some insight to. There's nothing wrong with expanding on an idea you didn't originally come up with. Writers borrow from one another all the time. It's a natural part of what we do and I daresay that the world would be a dreary place without the sharing and building upon of such ideas.

Tip #5: Write Something. Anything.

Yes, you read that right. Another way to overcome writer's block is...write something. Anything at all. You can write about the coffee you had this morning. You can make up a backstory about that cat you see wandering around the neighborhood every day. Write a letter to your kid that they'll read when they're older. Write about the delicious meal you just had.

Seriously, just write something. It doesn't matter what. There's no need to share it with anyone else, so don't worry too much about content or style.

Sometimes the most difficult thing about writing is simply getting started. We could make every excuse in the book before we've even begun. Don't defeat yourself that way. Once you've started, you've already started winning the battle. You may even notice your hands struggling to keep up with all the words trying to escape your head. It feels completely manic, but in a good way.

Every person, whether they know it or not, is living a life worth writing about. They just have to find those stories, however small, and connect the dots until a story emerges. It's kinda like weaving a tapesty but WAY simpler. Anyone can do it.

* * *

There you have it. Those are the techniques I've used to help me overcome my writer's block. I really do hope you'll find some use for these tips, or be inspired to put together a list of your own.

If you have a great technique not mentioned here, let me know! It's nice to get a peek into the minds of other people struggling with the same things I am.

Raise Up, Rather Than Bring Down

Even as a natural pessimist, one behavior I don't understand in people is this desire to see others brought down. Or, to be the ones bringing the other party down themselves.

What is it in our nature that drives us to such bitterness? Why must we scrabble and clamber over one another in reach of something we'll never grasp?

Today I witnessed a fine example of this. A coworker has decided that another of our colleagues is not living up to his standards, so he has decided to track every little failure she makes, gathering data into a chart that contrasts her perceived failures with his successes. Once he has enough data to work with he will show it to the next person higher up on our sad little totem pole. And for what? Some brief moment of pale superiority?

This sort of thing saddens me more than anything else. I would advocate for a method of encouragement and community rather than plotting someone else's downfall. Which leads me to ask...

...What are you doing in your everyday life that improves the lives of others around you?

...Are you always aware of the kind of effect your attitude has on those people?

...When was the last time you gave someone a compliment out of the blue?

...Wouldn't you rather totally make someone's day instead of being the one who utterly ruins it?

Just something to consider over the weekend. If you've got a story of a thing you did recently that made someone's day a little brighter, or helped them achieve any level of success, I'd love to hear it.