Eating my way through Italy – reviews

I’ve spent the past 10 days in Italy with a somewhat picky 12yo. Despite this, we’ve eaten relatively well! As a way of remembering, and in case you’re looking for recommendations, here’s places we ate:

Sestri Levante

Il Bargonello

Located at Via XXV Aprile, 143. We ate here our first night, and in some ways, it’s been downhill ever since. We sat on their patio on the street, I had an Aperol Spritz and a craft Italian Pilsner. We both ordered pizza – the kid a Margherita, myself a Tuna + Buffala pizza that was incredible. Kellan had a Limonata there that he spent the rest of the trip trying to find again – unsuccessfully unfortunately.. The service was great, the food was amazing. 5/5 stars.

Pizzeria Riri

Located at Viale Remembranza, 41. Our second night. Chosen because it was literally across the street from our apartment. It felt like a family-run place, and despite being on the main strip, across from the beach with an incredible view, it was delightful. I had pasta, Kellan had pizza. We ended up eating her twice, mostly because most places were closed on Mondays, but not here. 3/5 stars

Don Luigi

Located at Viale Remembranza, 36. The only actually bad meal we had all trip. I should have been suspicious because of the over-eager host/hawker calling us in. But TripAdvisor said reasonable things. I had bad pasta, Kellan had a bad pizza. The service was indifferent and slow. Do not recommend. 1/5 stars.

Delfino Bianco

Located at Via Vittorio Veneto, 2. I had a fresh caught Sea Bass and buttery-perfect potatoes, along with a local wine. Kellan had “just ok” pizza, so our review would split here. There was a massive tour group and what appeared to be some sort of family reception happening which meant we were a little forgotten for a bit, but our server made up for it with some truly great multilingual dad-jokes and by treating Kellan with more courtesy than most servers. 4/5 stars

Pizzeria 4 Canti

Located at Vico Lombardo, 8. We’d noticed a bunch of the local workers in the shops stopping in here for food, so we thought we’d give it a try. It was.. totally fine. Reasonable prices, friendly service, quick to serve. The atmosphere was great – seemed like everyone knew each other and people walking by would stop to chat too. 3/5 stars.

Pacifico Antico Forno

I weirdly can’t find this place on a map or online. Located roughly Via XXV Aprile, 45 – Next to Caffe Delle Fiabe. It made.. incredible Focaccia, which was our go-to breakfast everyday. A little salty, oily, smooth. I could eat it every day forever. We had focaccia from 2 other places in Sestri, none could hold a candle to theirs. 5/5 stars.

Rome

Pizza in Trevi

Located at Via San Vincenzo, 30/30A. The other place we went twice: the first time, we both decided to have something other than pizza – I had an amazing fish ravioli, Kellan had a burger – which was just ok. But the pizza looked amazing, so he wanted to come back. It also had a great selection of craft beer, and milkshakes for desert. We ate here our last night too, and had pizza which did not disappoint. 4/5 stars

Piccolo Buco

Located at Via del Lavatore, 91. This place came advertised as some of the best pizza in Rome. They don’t take reservations, you just line up in an alley across the street. It opens at 18:30, we got there 18:10 and the line was already nearly 50-deep – took about 40 minutes for us to be sat. The pizza is unlike anything I’ve had before. Gigantic puffy crust almost making a bowl for the ingredients – I had a yellowfin tuna with yellow-tomato-cream pizza. Kellan had a spicy salami. I loved mine – probably in the top 3 pizzas I’ve ever eat. But Kellan didn’t like his at all and barely ate it. So a mixed bag, but would recommend if you’re not with a picky eater. Pro tip: there’s a bar next door that’ll serve you take-out for while you’re waiting in line. 5/5 stars (1/5 stars from Kellan).

Trieste Pizza

Located at Via Urbana 112. Again chosen because of proximity – around the corner from our place after a long day for Kellan touring the Colosseum, this place was fun! But the food wasn’t good. I’d still – guardedly – recommend it though because the atmosphere was fun. Counter-service, with loud-music and neon signage “This pizza is fucking fantastic” and generally a good vibe. But… the pizza didn’t live up to the promise. 3/5 stars.

I definitely look forward to coming back to either Sestri Levante or Rome with someone who likes more kinds of food, but we did pretty good. I was surprised to find that there is an actual craft beer scene in Italy, and while mostly lighter beers, was reasonably good. I had wine 2 nights – one superlative (in Sestri), one fine (in Rome) – in both cases I just had a glass of the server’s recommendation.

Post-Burnout, Self-Identity

I’m not sure if I’ve been particularly explicit, but around when we sold Pencilneck, I was really suffering from burnout. At the time, I fully intended to entirely abandon the tech industry – maybe go to grad school, maybe this, maybe that – I didn’t really know what would be next – but I was 100% sure it would not be more of what I was doing. I’ve tried a variety of ways to write about this – I saw today that I have some dozen drafts that are somewhat related to this idea, but I’ve decided to stream-of-thought this to just put it out there rather than frame it essay-style.

I took on some work post-sale – “doing what I knew best” which was writing code. But a thing that I’m not sure I’ve ever voiced publicly is some of the visceral effects of my burnout. Sure, I had a hard time concentrating, and very low productivity, but in particular, a lasting, lingering effect was massive anxiety, burgeoning on panic, every time I opened an IDE and tried to write code. I did some of this – but, unlike the previous 20-odd years of doing this work, this stopped being my happy place, indeed, became this place of doubt. The spiraling bad thoughts meant that my heart wasn’t in it. I was generally fine with implementing work, editing existing things – I helped wrangle some Drupal and WordPress here, a little Django there – but this was tying other people’s work together, not writing new modules, not original programmatic thought.

The work I did at the time that I enjoyed, indeed, that brought me back to happiness was shifting my thinking from systems thought to structural or organizational thought. While that had been an increasingly large part of my work up to then, it has driven almost all my work since – and I love this.

So while yeah, part of this is definitely professional growth, I still find it weird that I no longer enjoy writing code – I have self-identified as a programmer since.. probably since I first discovered Basic when I was 8 or 9 years old. And I don’t any more – and this has certainly cause no small amount of Imposter Syndrome feels – most often when talking to developers about their work, or their progress the how dare you pretend like this is strong. And all of this is related to that same basic panicky instinct when I think about writing code. Exploring that, pulling on that uncomfortable thread, getting comfortable with my discomfort has been helpful – I’ve learned that it’s not the writing code per se, but rather my experience of what comes next – other people’s excitement, expectations, the burgeoning responsibilities, the pace of work, the endless, relentless crush of running a business where I am the engine, vs the simple act of writing code, solving at the function level.

I started this post with maybe a different intent than I find myself now at – I wanted to say maybe how much better I feel. But the truth is that I’m not sure I do. I have ideas that I’d love to explore. And importantly, I no longer feel panicky at the thought of writing software. But I think more than anything, I think I’m slowly, in what feels like a healthy way vs an avoidance, coming to terms that I no longer think of myself as a programmer (engineer, developer, etc). And I’m not sure I know that means entirely, yet. I love technical architecture and problem solving and systems design and platform tooling and the commensurate things that go with what I do. I have recently dug in and started playing with Swift, which I’d never used before, and didn’t feel panicky at all thinking about the idea of writing something.

But maybe this is the crux: I’ve spent my whole (adult) life deeply embracing the idea that if I have an idea, not only could I built it, but that I should build it – only I could built it – and if someone else if working on it, I always need to be able to jump in and finish it. The shift from “Individual Contributor (IC)” to “Leader” happened for me ages ago – but a large contributor to my burnout was this persistent thought I had to be able to be the best IC in a pinch, no matter what. And I don’t know entirely what this means, but I think I’m increasingly comfortable with the idea that if I have an idea, I don’t have to be the one to build it? Ideas are nothing without execution – but execution can maybe look something more like general contracting, organizing others rather than individual craftsmanship? I directly support at team of about 30 right now (and indirectly influence a fair number more), and there’s no scenario where my time is not better spent enabling, unlocking, supporting, coaching, planning, reviewing etc for all and any of them vs me doing any of their work. And that’s ok? that’s good. It’s pretty great, actually. These awesome people are executing – sometimes on my ideas, more importantly mostly on theirs. I deeply love what I do these days – but I wish I had a “definition” for it as simple as “I’m a programmer”.

I’m not entirely sure what I am now.

But to circle back, and maybe end on a down note: burnout is real, and the effects are maybe permanent, and I wish that I had paid more attention in the moment to the shifting sands of what game me bad, panicky anxiety vs what was giving me good, excitement anxiety. A little therapy, a little coaching, a lot of introspection has really helped me. I still don’t enjoy programming like I used to and (most days), that’s ok.

I’m Leaving Vancouver

I arrived in Vancouver in late summer of 1995, to come to university. I knew, almost the moment I got off the plane, that this would be home from now on. And until tomorrow, I’ve held to that. And let’s be clear – I love Vancouver. I’ve had the great fortune to travel extensively, and have had several opportunities to choose to go somewhere else – and I keep choosing here.

But that’s changed now – I’m leaving. The reasons are multiple, but the short answer to the unasked why is the same as it is for everything these days: because COVID-19. Since the pandemic hit, I no longer need to go to the office, and people, this is a good thing in my books. Since the pandemic hit, I no longer go to restaurants, or clubs, or concerts, or movies, or anything that feels like it requires a city to do.

The other thing that happened is I kind of reconnected with nature. Early on, I made an effort to get to the forest nearly every day: Pacific Spirit park, Stanley park, all over the North Shore and places beyond. And when it got warmer, I spent more time on and by the water. And all the time spent there really centred me – I found a peace that the focus on day-to-day life in the city that I had forgotten about.

In July, right as restrictions eased, we stayed in a place on the Sunshine Coast, in Secret Cove. And while there, thinking about the perfection of it, the slowness of it, we asked each other – “what if we just lived here?” And so about 6 weeks later we had an accepted offer on a house in Gibsons, had successfully sold our townhouse in Vancouver and in about 12 hours, we’ll be moving in.

This – this is the awkward part to say out loud, but for the most part, the pandemic has been good for me and my family: my work is solid (but busy!) and interesting, we’re spending more time together, we’ve saved money compared to our before-times lifestyle. And this move kind of doubles-down on that idea: we’re buying ourselves more financial freedom, more time together, more access to the things we like to do together: hike, camp, paddle, play games – hang out.

There’s things I’ll miss about Vancouver – and we’ll certainly be tied pretty closely as Leah will be coming back weekly, and I hope to be coming back about monthly for various things. One reason we chose Gibsons is that while it is away, it’s not so far away.

The house we’ve bought has plenty of space indoors and out for safely distanced socializing; and when things settle out in a couple of years, there will even be a ready stand-alone guest suite for people coming out way.

It’s funny – for most of my life, I’ve dreamed only of living in ever-bigger cities. I love the bustle of a crowded subway, milling pedestrians – the vitality of a busy city is amazing. Maybe again in the future I’ll want that but for now? I really feel like I like my city like I like my snow: close enough to get to it easily when I want it, but not all around me all winter long.

Managing through aphorisms

They’re clichés, sure, but are for a reason. And in a sound-byte driven world, having a punchy phrase to summarize what is often full of nuance is useful. I find myself returning to these as mantras, rallying cries and whatnot repeatedly as I lead a team, pull in collaborators and stakeholders, and generally try to make better software in better ways.

Default To Open

In what is probably the most surprising 180 from my early career, I lean deeply on this idea, across several ways:

  • open source your code. This has a few effects: write all your code like someone else is going to read it, that you don’t know. Make sure your code is functional. More basically, thinking in an open-source mind changes some approaches.
  • Talk about your work openly. Learn in the open. Share your learning, your success, your failures. Write about it. talking about. Let anyone who wants to follow along follow along. This helps remove some barriers to being vulnerable in my experience, and can help sharpen thinking by actively, consistently reflecting on work in progress.
  • Give access to your work. Open your backlog for others to see. Keep tickets available to submitters so there’s no back-channel. Talk in open channels not private messages. All of this can help drive a practice of asking questions, being respectful of others’ learning, a safe space for vulnerability, and being kind to clients/stakeholders.

Aim for Less Wrong

At all times, assume you’re wrong. Your goal is to get to be less wrong. You can only validate how wrong you are by talking/sharing with others, and being humble about that. And understand that everyone is wrong at the start, and constantly working to get to less wrong. I’ve found that by repeating this over and over, it can help lead to some changes:

  • asking more questions
  • being kinder in response to “dumb” questions
  • putting something into existence to work on/against, vs being paralyzed by choice to start. It’s easier to talk about something in particular vs a general idea “let’s do X” rather than “we should do something” gives an opportunity to change X.
  • It removes the stigma and potential shame about being wrong – you’re already wrong. Know this, accept this, and aim to be less wrong.

Writing software is a team sport

This is sort of the corollary of go alone to go fast, go together to go further. You need others to be successful, because everyone is full of biases, and other people help you get around them. And people with different skills are required for a good team. I’ve found this is a helpful gentle nudge away from individuals who constantly want to be a hero and take everything on by themselves too.

Write less software

Perhaps ironic for a software team, but the best software is the software you don’t write. Much like how a car loses half its value as you drive it off the lot, All production software is legacy someone needs to deal with in the future. So write less of it. If you can use someone else’s software? if your default position is “I don’t need to write this”, it can really give focus to the decision that, indeed, you do need to write it. Can you justify why you haven’t just used someone else’s software? it is worth the effort, the cost of maintenance?

Write boring software

This goes along with the above. We all want to write super-brilliant, complex software that’s on the cutting edge of everything because we’re that awesome. But guess what. Chances are that you’re only going to be responsible for 10% of that software’s life. OTHER people – OTHER systems will have to be able to work with in in the future. So if you follow common patterns, you lower the cognitive overhead to learn it. and maintain it. Resumé-driven Development should be avoided in almost all instances, because software needs to live in teams, not individual’s heads. It also means to, more often than not, move cautiously. Don’t adopt that rad new framework just because it is there. The larger the organization, the more important this is. Human ability to share immense code-bases because of predictable patterns is major advantage.

Progress is more important than excellence

Everyone wants to be the best. Strive for that. But perfectionism is the enemy of good (is that another aphorism to live by?). What’s important is consistent progress towards better on all plans. experiment, iterate, improve. Fail one time? that’s fine. learn and do it better next time. If you’re the best, if everything is excellent, you’re in the wrong job – because you’re not being challenged. Similarly, if you can no longer progress, you’re in the wrong job – because you either don’t care or you’re in the wrong role for your skills.

There’s of course and endless list of these. These few keep cropping in conversations over the past year or so. Other things I’m trying to find good wording for is around the concept of how good software is living, or like a plant, or something – that you have to maintain it, update it, let it adapt to the world around it, etc.

A year (or so) in

boardroom

If you recall, when last we left our intrepid hero, he’d started a job at TELUS Digital. It’s now been shortly over a year, so let’s check in, shall we?

[Ed note: I can’t keep that 3rd-person voice up, so abandoning it. But I love the phrase “our intrepid hero”, so the opening stays]

Today, I want to write about parenting. I wrote a post for our corporate blog about my experience as a working dad. And so that’s been on my mind. And then, the other night while out for a post-event drink with a couple of people on my team, I was asked “Do guys talk about the struggle? Juggling parenting and working and gym and shopping and, and, and…?” And I had to think about it a moment – and it’s definitely only my personal experience, but the short answer is “no”, we don’t. I don’t see many examples in pop-culture (TV) or on social-media (outside of dad-blog culture). And it’s not cool, so I’m going to:

It’s hard, y’all. When I was working from home, part time, I had a great life. I got work done, I got to the gym, I saw my kids a lot, I got out with friends. I didn’t cook too much, because I don’t enjoy that much, but I felt on top of it all.

Since coming back to work full-time, this has changed. In the year prior to coming to TELUS, I was really good about getting to the gym 3 times a week – I lost about 50 lbs in 15 months. In the last year, that’s just stopped. I had to make priority decisions, and it lost: I work, roughly, 9-to-5. I can’t get to the gym in the AM, because to get to work on time, I’d need to be at the 7am class. And I can’t do that, because generally, I do the morning stuff at home – get the kids up, make breakfast, make lunches, etc. There’s a 5pm class – which would mean leaving by 4:15, which is really hard. There’s a 6pm class, but that means I wouldn’t be home before 7:30ish, and I’d miss virtually the entire evening with the kids, not to mention a late dinner time that might run over the 8yo’s bedtime.

I no longer feel like I get enough time with my kids, and I’m not satisfied with how I spend some of what I do. Professionally, I interact with people all day long. I’m in hours of meetings every day, I’m leading people, I’m on. As an introvert, this is draining. I show up and bring it every day, and then I’m just wiped. And I need recovery time, alone in my head, to be able to bring this every day. Indeed, I’ve stopped listening to podcasts, even music with lyrics most days on my way home from work because I just don’t want to hear any more talking directed at me. And, and this sucks for my family, because some days I just don’t have it in me to be as present as I’d like to be for them. There are (many) days I just want to stare off into space to recover a little.

I don’t see my friends as much, in part because of the above. But also because everything else that needs to get done – taking the kids to their activities, shopping, laundry, etc – there’s just so much less time to do it all, and that gets prioritized over beers with a buddy. And I do miss that.

So, yeah. Being honest, I don’t feel I know how to balance work and life in a way that feels “right”. I don’t believe so much in “work-life balance” because by the nature of what I do and how I do it, I need to believe in it, and so I tend to think about work all sorts of strange times and ways, and that’s all good. And this is nothing like how hard it was when it was my company, and all the extra pressures that brings. But I don’t feel like I’ve got it figured out. And I definitely look around in wonder at some colleagues with families and wonder how they manage to do it all. Sometimes I make judge-y assumptions about them, but increasingly, I suspect they’re also struggling, and just making different, invisible compromises to make it work for them.

3 years with an e-bike

My Bike, as I unboxed it.

A little over 3 years ago, I tore my ACL. It wasn’t awesome. I was in constant pain, and worst of all, I couldn’t ride my bike – my primary means of commuting. I decided that an electric bike would help keep me moving and active.

In October 2016, I brought home a VanMoof Electrified S (that link actually goes to the current model, the S2). I was immediately in love with my bike. I think I only rode my former, much-loved MEC Hold Steady (matte-black version) once more before it was sadly stolen in March of this year.

My VanMoof is definitely a v1 device – even the 2017 version of the same bike had some notable improvements. That being said, 3 years in, I’ve come to know it pretty well, and with that in mind, here’s some things I love, and things I don’t.

The Awesome

  • the integrated lights! I don’t know why this wasn’t immediately stolen by all commuter-bike manufacturers, whether electric or not. I have mine set to “Auto”, so they just come on or turn off based on light levels, and I never have to think about bike lights again.
  • Electric-assist: I know, it’s an electric bike, but riding 10-15K a day, with assist that “smooths out the hills” is still revelatory.
  • Quiet. I’ve read that both the 2017 model and S2 are even quieter, but this bike is already much quieter than virtually every other electric bike I come across. There’s a light whisper with the regular e-assist, and a slight whine when I engage the boost feature. Speaking of…
  • Boost! There’s a button on the handlebar to get a boost of extra power beyond the assist level – this is very handy to keep chill on hills, starting up at lights, or when heavily leaden with bags.
  • The design remains distinctive and lovely. I get questions or appreciative comments monthly, even 3 years later.
  • Ride comfort. This is a well-built bike made for a comfortable ride, and is quite smooth.
  • Battery life. I bike 10-15K a day in my commute, and I generally only charge my bike once a week. I think it advertised 100K and 3 years in, I feel I regularly get pretty close to that. Except in wintertime, when the batter is notably worse.

The not-great.

  • The touch interface. Mine has simply never worked reliably enough to use. I’m supposed to be able to touch turn it on, adjust assist levels and what not. I just pretend it isn’t there.
  • The app. It’s pretty bare bones. It loses connection with the bike semi-regularly so I have to force-close and restart it. I wish it integrated with GPS tools like Strava or Runkeeper to pass on information. I’d love to look in my VanMoof app to see total miles, average speed, time spent with what level of assist/boost, etc.
  • The bike software itself. I’ve had my bike “crash” 3 times (about once a year). It takes resetting the software, a process that itself means plugging the bike into a powered micro-usb cable for a bit to reset itself. 3 times in 3 years isn’t a lot, but it does always seem to happen at the end of a long ride when the battery is low, coincidentally right when I’m about to ride up a big hill
  • Speed settings. My bike seems really happy cruising along at about 18-20 km/h. Which is fine, but definitely much slower than a lot of other e-bikes run at. The Boost, for instance, doesn’t work if you’re going more than 20km/h. I find when riding on the flat, once I hit a speed of about 22-24k, the bike feels like it is actively resisting me, rather than assisting me. So, 18k is fine, but often not as fast as I feel I could go without additional effort, but the bike feels like it is fighting me if I do.
  • Weak motor. I joke that my bike is made for Dutch Hills (Holland is famously flat). It really struggles up the bigger hills in town – from false creek up Ontario st is a daily ride for me, and it whines somewhat ominously, and even the boost, while definitely helpful, means I still get a workout up there (maybe this is good?). Compared to a Trek ebike I was able to try out, I’m clearly not getting the same level of push up a hill though.
  • No gears. I don’t want many, but from that one time I did a tour of burrard inlet, biking from home, across the lions’ gate, along and back over the second narrows, having a gear to help me climb hills better, rather than relying on the underwhelming motor would be nice.
  • Cheap/bad parts. VanMoof definitely skimped out on some of these. The stock pedals and cranks look and feel cheap. The brakes have been problematic the whole time – indeed, the first time I took my bike to a shop to get my brakes adjusted, the comment was “Oh, these are really bad – you should replace them soon”. for a $3K bike, that’s not cool.

Other notes

This isn’t so much about the bike, but rather Vancouver – I don’t feel like I can ride this bike and park it anywhere – even with the “smart lock” and tracking technology built-in, Vancouver is so bad for bike theft that unless I know I’ve got secure bike parking or The Bicycle Valet at my destination, I won’t ride anywhere I’d have to leave my bike out of sight.

You may wonder if I’m happy with my bike, based on that list of pros and cons above. In short, the pros vastly outweigh the cons. The bike is amazing, and I’d recommend it to anyone. Particularly the newer models, which all have very directly addressed several of the problems I’ve seen with it.

Everyone should ride a bike more – and if you need some help doing so, I cannot recommend an e-bike enough. And in 2019, your options are much broader as to what’s available, for a surprisingly reasonable amount!

The Facebook Conundrum

In spring of 2018, I deleted the Facebook app from my phone, and decided to just use the web app.

Then in November 2018, I suspended my Facebook account – I didn’t delete it entirely, but put in a calendar reminder 3 months hence to see if I wanted to either restore it or delete my account altogether. That alert came a couple of weeks ago.

So here’s the thing: overall, I think I’m happier not interacting directly with Facebook. I still do in many ways – I’m a regular (but increasingly irregular) Instagram user, I use WhatsApp to chat with friends, and I use Messenger for the same purpose. I was already fairly draconian in that I had a rule that to be Facebook friends, we must have shared a drink together in person, which made for a lovely way to say “thanks but no thanks” to so many random requests-to-be-friends (and, occasionally and awkward “whoops!” when it turns out I had done this thing with the person), and so I have a fairly small friend-list on Facebook compared to many. I’m not sure exactly, but I think it was about 120-150 people.

And while a primary driving factor in my getting rid of Facebook was corporate behaviour, it is also true that spending time on Facebook made me unhappy. No matter how I tried to curate my feed, I seemed to end up full of bizarre ( = conspiratorial, hateful, etc) news stories, dumb/scam-like ads and constant creepy reminders of how well FB could identify my lifestyle, habits and interactions. Very much related, a primary reason I’m using Instagram less and less is my perception that the number of ads I see in my feed is skyrocketing.

But here’s the thing. I’m not “off” Facebook. My wife still uses it a lot, and what’s ended up happening is that because I’m not using it regularly, she’ll mention some news about our circle of friends that I have no idea about. I’ve missed it. And, completely unintentionally I’ve just added the duty to inform me of news about my friends on to her cognitive load. And, it must be said, I miss hearing bits about my friends whom I don’t see regularly. And I can’t think of any reasonable way to stay in touch that doesn’t add a level of imposition to them: one-to-one messaging, rather than broadcasting, just for my benefit isn’t fair. And there’s nothing out there with enough of a presence that I could imagine asking 80-odd people to move to (given that their circle of friends is unlikely to move too).

So I find myself with this conundrum: I can give up this “protest” (I’m not even sure that’s the right word. I just… stopped going there), and turn it all back on, and then I’ll get the updates from friends, and I won’t be out of the loop, and Leah won’t have this extra duty to inform me. But if I do, then I’ll be back on Facebook, which doesn’t feel like a great thing either. I feel damned if I do, damned if I don’t.

And this is (probably) why no matter how scandalous Facebook’s behaviour, it just keeps trucking on. Inertia is massive.


Raising an Emotionally-aware child

Kellan Standing Tall

Kellan is most definitely in the throws of The Terrible Threes. I don’t know where this “terrible twos” business came from – because, for both my kids, age two was pretty wonderful. And speaking to other parents, two-year-olds are ok, but three-year-olds are hideous monsters who should all be locked up.

With Liam, I think Leah and I both thought that we were amazing parents because we never had any troubles – I’m not sure he ever had a time-out – maybe one or two, tops. And he was kind, and soft-spoken, and had great concentration. And hey, that’s totally because we’re awesome, right? No. It turns out, like we always thought, that Liam was an exceptional child. Kellan, whom I love dearly, is more like a textbook child. Those monthly “your child at this age” newsletters? yeah, he hits every one of those notes, both good and bad.

And right now, I have to say, is really hard. I’m sure that somewhere in the law is a rule that says murder most foul is completely justified after the 437,000th “why?” of the day, right? And along with the “why”s, there is a lot of yelling, shrieking, crying, laughing, running, babbling, talking, throwing, hitting, hugging, jumping, etc, etc, etc.

And these emotional outbursts are what are troubling me, and I’m not sure what is best to do.

  • I don’t want to teach my child to bottle up his emotions and not share what he’s feeling, BUT
  • I don’t want my child to scream and yell every time he’s angry AND
  • I don’t want my child to sob inconsolably every time he doesn’t get his way BUT
  • I do want my child to express his feelings AND
  • I do want to provide a safe, nurturing space for him to feel this feelings.

So. I do things like say “boys who yell don’t get what they want” and “I can’t understand you when you’re crying like that. Can you tell me with words what you want?” and “are you feeling sad/frustrated/angry/scared/etc?” and so on. And on one hand, I feel like this is good – because I’m trying to teach him to find other avenues to express his emotions, and give him the vocabulary to do this with. But on the other hand, every time I ask him to stop crying or yelling or whatever, or tell him that he doesn’t need to be scared, I worry that I’m just teaching him to be a stereotypical male who bottles up his emotions. And that if I say “dont’ X”, I’m invalidating his experience of feeling X, which, I really don’t want to do because it’s OK that he is feeling X – I just want to teach him to express that feeling more “appropriately”. And I quote that word because, really? more appropriately? Who am I to say what’s a more appropriate way? Because am I ever one of those males who doesn’t express emotion well. I’ve worked SO hard as an adult to be much more in tune with what I’m feeling, and how to express it because I didn’t know how as a child. And I want better for my kids. But…hard.

So, yeah – there’s no resolution to this post – mostly just a voicing of my concerns – putting out into the world what I’m feeling as a way of exploring it. Or, as Kellan might say “WHY is this hard? WHY don’t I know? WHY?”

Creating Focus

(n.b.: this was originally posted at Medium, due to a server issue here)

I, perhaps like a lot of creatives, need to create “the right space” to get things done. I’m easily distracted when I’m not focussed. When I’m easily distracted, I’m not terribly productive.

I suppose I should point out that you might not call me a creative?—?I’m a developer, a programmer, an engineer if you so choose?—?although, to me, writing code has always been an amazingly free, creative process.

I try hard to work a short week (my aim is to actually work 30-40 hrs every week, which, as any entrepreneur or small-business-owner will tell you, is an ambitious goal. I fail more often than I succeed. But that’s my aim). Because of this, I cannot afford to waste my productive time. But inherently, I’m a procrastinator?—?I like to put things off, I like to tool around.

I’ve been running a consultancy for 11 years, so I feel like I’m starting to figure this all out now. While these may not work for you (you’re not me, after all), I thought I’d share some of the things I do when I’m having a hard time concentrating.

First: why do I need to create focus? Because I want to exist, permanently, in the zone. I want the outside world to fade away, leaving only what’s in my head. I need to easily remember the comment I logged on line 1823 of one file, while editing code in several others. If I’m tracing a bug, I need to hold every step in memory. When I write code, I often don’t commit it to screen until the entire function/object/whatnot is already written in my head. I wrote papers in university the same way: Wander around for days with a slowly forming paper, then, in 1 sitting, write out the paper and hand it in (I have a comparative French Literature degree so there were a lot of papers).


So! focus! to the point?—?here’s some of my tricks to fine the zone when it’s elusive. The first step is preparing to concentrate. Do any or all of these. I find it often takes me all 3.

  1. Find the perfect song. I play music when I’m producing. I pause it when I’m not. I can judge how much concentration-time I got in a day by how many minutes of music I listened to. But to start, I need to start it right. This used to be done with my own library, but these days I use Rdio. It doesn’t matter what this is. Depending on mood, this’ll be any number of genres. I know it when I hear it. I’ll admit that I’ll spend easily 15 minutes doing this. But the payoff is worth it. Because that one song is all it takes. You want a song that transports you, that lifts you, that effects that important chemical change within you. Do NOT work while listening to this one song. But work as soon as it’s done. This is your Ready! Set! song. The ending of the song is your Go!
  2. Meditate. Seriously. I cannot stress how great this is. Close your door, close your eyes, put your headphones on (no sound), and focus on your breathing for a few minutes. Whatever you can to not exactly empty your mind, but to quiet or direct your mind. Of note, I’ll purposefully not think of what I’m about to do, but rather an end goal of the task during this. But the important part for me is to create a singular thought?—?really no matter what that thought is.
  3. Walk. I will often leave the office, circle the block, come back. It takes 5 minutes. But I leave anxious, troubled, over-excited, etc and return ready.Walk with purpose. I don’t amble on this walk, I stride, with purpose. Don’t talk to someone. Don’t hang out by the water cooler on the way in or out. This isn’t a social opportunity. In may ways, this is an isolatingopportunity.

Now I’m ready to work?—?but often still not sure that I’m ready to focus. Particularly if I’m working on something I’m not too thrilled about, so I do a couple of warm ups.

  1. Pick a Quick Task & Do It. My rule is that this needs to be something I can complete in under 30 minutes. I will often set a timer to ensure?—?at 30 minutes I have to stop no matter what. This can be anything that you can accomplish solo: read & respond to a particular message. Write those comments you’ve been putting off. Explain a query. Review performance stats. Pick the smallest, easiest bug off the top of the list and squash it. Read commits. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t even need to be related to what you’re about to spend serious time on?—?you just want something to be a quick win that required some amount of focus. these are your warm-up pitches.
  2. Write out a sentence describing your success. “I rewrote a query that shaved 75% off of execution”. “I created a user object extension to describe customers” whatever. I personally like to write these in the past tense. I tend to use Notes.app on my iPhone to do this, but it doesn’t matter, really. But project your success. My only rule is that this is what I’m going to accomplish when I do start work. So the ambitiousness of the statement needs to relate to the time available to me. Don’t write “I rewrote facebook” if you’ve only got 3 hours.
  3. Tell your team how long you’re ‘going under’ for. If you work alone, likely not as relevant. But tell your co-workers, wife, kids, etc, that you need X time to not be disturbed.
  4. Go Silent. Turn of notifications. Turn of distractions. I: close Twitter. Close Messages. Close Skype. Close Adium. Turn my phone to airplane mode. Turn of notifications. Close all “fun” browser tabs. If I could, I’d close Slack, but that’s the deal I’ve made?—?that’s my emergency beacon.

Get to it!

It took me a while to compile the series of things I do over and over again to create focus, but these do the trick. I don’t always do all of this. But even on the worst days, I find that stepping through these really helps me find that focus that I need to do my best work. Many days, all it takes is choosing a song and finding my first task, and then blam, suddenly its fours later and I’ve got a shit-tonne done. Other days it takes all steps, & several iterations. But what’s awesome is that at most, I’ve “lost” 30-45 minutes, but created so much opportunity for creation.

Rethinking “Workaholism”

Working | Playing

Recently, Lauren wrote a really great piece on “The Balance Matrix” – a struggle many of us share, and something I’ve been working hard on my whole professional life. Reading it made me start to re-examine some of my childhood experience.

My parents were (are now really, despite being at least nominally semi-retired) workaholics – they worked, really, all the time. They got up early, went to work, came home, ate food, went back to work. I went to bed and still they’d work. They worked on weekends. They travelled for work. They worked when they travelled. Both my parents are phenomenally successful, and leaders in their respective fields – but boy did they ever work hard to get there.

At the back of our house was a sort of solarium, the sun room we called it. My dad, mostly, worked there. We had a glass-topped table and he would sit at, idly nibbling at the eraser of a yellow HB pencil or a gently pinching his lower lip between his thumb & fingers. He’d be hunched – either forwards, leaning over the table, or back, his right leg cross over his left. In either case, most of the time there’d be several piles of printed documents – journals, study results, his own data – spread over the table. To one side would be his dictaphone. But his focus was always on a lined yellow pad of paper. He’d furiously write away on that, turn a page. He never seemed to go back – he’d just write. I suspect he was constantly writing in his head prior. When he was satisfied, he’d dictate what he wanted to say and someone in the dictation pool at the hospital would later type it up. In more recent times, of course, much of  this would be replaced by his laptop. But not the yellow-lined pad of paper, nor the alternately leaning hunch.

My mother, by contrast, always hid herself away to work. Once my sister moved out, she took over her room and that became her office where she would while away the night, busy writing, researching, thinking, quietly muttering to herself. As a teenager, many a night would I carefully sneak home in the dead of night only to discover that my mum was still up working. Some of that may have been parental worry about her wayward young son, but she’d be up that late nights I was home too.

What’s curious is that although my father worked in a public spot, his work was much more mysterious to me than Mum’s – she would think out loud, talk about her work with us all – I suspect as much to help formulate her own thoughts as to share – while Dad was simply quietly efficient, back there in the sun room.

I swore, as I got older, that I would never be like them. I hated that they always worked, and I thought it a terrible life that I wanted nothing to do with. I loved the idea of indolent evenings spent with my family playing, sharing, living.

But a fun thing happened on the way to the coliseum….

I discovered that I have incredible work ethic – like my parents. I discovered that I too prefer to work in long, straight, deeply-focussed bouts – like my parents. I discovered that I too have immense ambition and drive to succeed – like my parents. I discovered that I too love what I do, and it’s not really work when you love it that much – like my parents.

But I still, even when I want to – try really hard to not bring work home, to not work evenings, to stop and truly experience my own children’s youth. And so I don’t work at home in the evenings. Liam, now in grade 3, is starting to have regular homework – somewhere between 30 & 60 minutes worth 3 days a week. And you know what? it’s a struggle to get him to do it. My sister, who shares many work traits with myself and my parents, doesn’t work at home either. And you know what? it’s a struggle for her to get her kids to do their homework. But, despite all my slacker tendencies at school (sat at the back, never took notes, etc), I always did my homework. It’s just what we did at home – we did our work.

And so, now, I look back at my parents long work hours and don’t just see workaholics chained to their desks. I see amazing parents who not only wanted to succeed, but wanted their children to succeed and modelled how to manage time, how to prioritize work – and most importantly, how to work. I see parents who showed their children how to have a career you love and children you love and work hard at both.

I don’t want to struggle to convince Liam to do his homework and whether he needs to do it – homework’s one of those stupid things that you have to do. But how fair is it, in his eyes, that he has to come home from a long, hard day at school and then do more work when both his parents are sitting on the couch, relaxing? He has no model to indicate that working at home is a normal part of life. And while yeah, I wish schools didn’t give homework and I doubt the utility of it, it happens. And so now, as we embark on this 8+year journey of nightly homework, I think back to how well my parents modelled getting stuff done at home and begin to think they weren’t, perhaps, just insane workaholics.

Perhaps, just maybe, they were teaching me something. And I could teach my children that too. And so, when my kids have homework, maybe I should have homework too. I’m a small business owner. There’s no shortage of things to do. I don’t want to spend my evening doing them, but then, Liam doesn’t want to spend his evening doing homework either. So maybe we should treat this as something of a team sport. We’re all in this together.

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