Category: Family and Musings

Teaching

It is often said that teachers are important, noble, and essential (disclosure – I come from a family full of teachers). But why do people say this exactly?

I think it is because of the long term. Teachers (if they’re doing their job) are trying to prepare young people for long term success. This is not the case with so many jobs.

Wall Street traders trying to profit as much as possible in the shortest time frame. Or the fast food store selling the cheapest rubbish to as many people as possible. This sort of short term-ism or race to the bottom is not really useful with proper teaching. Instead it requires patience, creativity and a long term approach.

What stops many teachers making the impact they ought to make or gaining the recognition they deserve? I think it is likely the system in which they have been employed for so long. The industrial model of education which we still mostly use, treats children like factory employees, squeezing them into predefined boxes and encouraging cramming for tests. This is not necessarily preparing them for the real world problems in this Information Age. But I digress.

Teachers, like doctors and nurses, are heroes.

Happy Wednesday chimps.

Your life vs. your Self

This morning I woke up super early to feed one of my children. When that happens I use the time to meditate, read and listen to music. If I could I would do these quieter things all day.

I’m often more creative, engaged and productive with big stretches of time spent on my own. This is good to understand.

Happy Tuesday chimps.

Split

It helps a lot if you are confident about the desired outcome. If you know what you want. I’m not sure what the stats are, but I bet that the odds of something happening go way up if you have the end goal clearly emblazoned is your mind.

All of the most important things related to a project – values, culture, status, leadership – they depend on the parameters that are set.

Maybe an example will help me express myself. If you write a novel, and it starts as a tragedy, then slips into a sci-fi, then to a slapstick comedy, and finally reaches a crescendo as a religious historical piece – well that sounds like a confused mess.

Genre and its audience is perhaps where you want to start. It helps to define the values, the culture and the modus operandi.

With that in mind, I have realized my writing on this blog tends to split into different interests. I might write about creativity, African trade, productivity, music, or sci-fi all in the space of a week.

This needs to become a little clearer, and step one in the splitting out of interests is to redesign the site a little. I think this new template is clearer and the menu at the top will help to clarify things.

It’s a work in progress.

For anyone who has reached this far in the post, happy Monday chimps. 😀

Revisiting old posts

The below post didn’t publish properly on Friday, so here it is again. Happy Sunday chimps.

One of the fun (if lightly embarassing) things about having a blog, is that you can look over your old posts. There are stats so you can check out your most popular posts, check them by date, by category and so on.

A few years ago I wrote this post highlighting the fact that I didn’t know who I was writing for. That was in 2017 and unfortunately 3 years later I still don’t really know the answer.

I read that in order to succeed building an audience on the web you need to have the who, the what and the where. The only part of the equation I have really sorted out is the where (this blog). I still don’t know the genre to stick with or who to share it with. Which is a little discouraging.

Happy Friday chimps

Night time panics

It’s not so much a panic, but more a huge imagining of potential future outcomes for projects that live in my head.

Once I am awake (usually kids crying) my brain throws a thought at me, I think of some way to change the outcome and then the snowball effect means I don’t sleep for hours.

I can feel it when the Adrenaline hits the body and at that point i might as well get up and have a coffee. I ain’t sleeping anymore.

Last night was bad but gave me a few ideas to work on.

Hoping for sleep tonight though.

Happy Saturday chimps.

Goal achieved!!! Now, please have a Newsletter

If my calculations are correct (and they may very well be incorrect….I blame COVID if that’s the case) but if they’re correct – I have actually done 34 posts in a row on this blog. 34!!!! You may remember (link) I was going for 30. I did it a few days ago without actually realising. Either way I am happy!

Fireworks. Champagne. Singing. Chanting. Mass celebrations lining the streets.

In all seriousness, I am very happy. I have achieved a goal stated in public and with a track record to prove it. And to celebrate, I want to start a newsletter which will come out once a week.

Inspired by this guy: Ben Evans and this guy: Tim Ferris I will try and include in the newsletter everything that I find helpful or interesting from the web. It will be weekly (out on Wednesdays) and it will include links to external stuff, and a few of my own thoughts. This will primarily be an archive for myself, but if others find it interesting too, then all the better.

If you want to subscribe, click on the menu button (top right of this blog) and click the appropriate button.

If not, then don’t 🙂

Here’s to continuous creating.

Happy Tuesday chimps.

Bad bananas

Do you remember the classic banana scene in Disney’s Jungle Book? (I’m talking about the cartoon, of course link). Mowgli has several ripe bananas shot into his mouth.

At our house, when we buy fruit we tend to bring it home, put it in a bowl, and watch it rot.

One way to deal with this excess is to go full Mowgli. You could shove as much slightly over-ripe fruit as possible in your mouth.

Another approach is to make lemonade out of lemons, strawberry jam out of strawberries, and banana bread out of bananas (see below recipe from my dear ol’ Ma):

COVID19 is your latest bowl of rotting fruit. How will you make it good/fun/interesting/fruitful??

Happy Monday chimps.

Remote drumming

Today was a first. I laid down a drum track using the iPad, and sent it overseas to my dad in Kenya for him to overlay guitar and vocals.

I know musicians have been doing this for ages, but Covid19 is forcing us to use the tools at our disposal and pushing us out of our comfort zones. For me that means sticking to a blogging commitment and producing music with family overseas.

I just love the internet.

Happy Sunday chimps.

Perfect weather

Today was the most perfect weather in Cape Town. High of 25 Celsius and not a breath of wind. The air is clear as crystal. Maybe it’s because of COVID19 slowing the pollution levels. Maybe it’s just a nice day.

I can see hawks circling the forest below the mountains from my garden. They must have some great views up there.

We made the most of it, swimming, working on the garden, playing with kids.

Even though there is always the thought of the big world out there on a lovely day like today, everything (even lockdown) is a little better with the sun shining. I hope there are more sunny days than not for the duration of the pandemic.

Happy Saturday chimps.