The 45 Blog

1. Branding requires consistency. If a website communicates a certain image, then the product or service must match it. That’s branding. If the actual is less than the image portrayed, it’s advertising.
2. Sometimes the 20th time works. Recording something can be frustrating– but taking a few breaths, meditating, and setting an intention helps– not all the time, but enough.

Aliright. I’ve been an analog person for a long time, but this kindle reader that you can write in is changing my mind. Instead of having 5 paper journals, I now have them in one digital one, along with a library organized by themes. Usually I spent 400 bucks a year on paper and pens, but this eliminates that expense.

Love it.

A pretty perfect day. Awoke at 4:30 , as if something were pulling me out of bed. I immediately wrote, then went for a starlit walk with my wife. For some reason I had the notion that my red glasses would return to me. I scheduled time to clean the house in search of them.

After finishing my writing session at 8:30, my oldest and I went out for coffee and when we returned, the red glasses were sitting on my jeep.

I took it as a sign to get bold again.

1. The kind of person who farts in the dark vs the kind of person who farts in the light.
2. Do coddled children grow up to be fragile teachers with a less formal persona? If so, how does that affect classroom structure, safety and effectiveness? DO kids even listen?
3. Do DEI phrases in school literature, such as being an anti-racist organization that fights for equity or closes the achievement gap, actually increase teacher bias towards students, lowering expectations and aspirations? With phrases front-loaded that way, it seems that they may work in the same manner that trigger warnings do– the anticipation makes things worse than reality.

4. Do you want to be the band-aid or do you want to part of be the cure?

On this morning’s walk, the old man with the chihuahua didn’t say good morning. Instead, he stared at the woods that were getting destroyed by heavy machinery. One of the backhoes had the size, strength and roar of a dinosaur in a Jurassic Park.

I joined him for a moment because I get it.

It’s in our dna.

The only fossil is this picture.

Rolling the half-full garbage can to the curb, I could feel it wobble as the contents moved around on the inside. The weight was shifting.

If it were empty, there would be no weight to shift around– therefore there would be fewer wobbles.

If it were full, the space inside would be minimal– therefore there would be no room for the objects to shift and cause unbalance.

It’s a message– be full of commitment to one singular purpose to stay balanced or be empty to achieve the same balance, yet be unfulfilled.

Those are the only real options because the consequence of being half-empty and half-full causes accidents. Things tip over during the wobble and everything gets messy.

For our evening walk, my wife wears her canary-yellow clogs. They guide us, brightening the walk and pavement, illuminating the dark in a manner that matches faith.

Our pace is quick so as to get home before the bats come out. I despise the winged mice filled with rabies, rumored to be blind, and dependent on echolocation to identify prey, friends, and to search the world for basic needs.

They can hear the shape of my leg , my location and even the stray hair on my beard.

Then I begin to wonder what the color “yellow” sounds like to bats, if its particular shade bounces back into the its ears, and if there’s a particular timbre to it. Yellow may sound like a church bell chime that ripples as water ripples, disturbed by a skipping stone. Or maybe yellow is the color of an angel’s song, just before the dark world ends , because the sun rises, chasing the bat away, dissolving into the dark as dark recedes from our awareness.

The smaller the leader, the bigger the bureaucracy .

The smaller the bureaucracy, the bigger the leader.

A car on a jack, revving its wheels at maximum RPM, and getting nowhere.

Sometimes that’s what a day feels like. Spinning, making noise, being loud.

The road doesn’t meet the rubber.

Instead, you have to drop the car , let the tires hit the road, and steer like you’re going some place.

Waiting or resting? The activity is the same, but the intent differs. Either can imply doing nothing, being inactive, being paused.

But with waiting, there’s the anticipation that something will happen. Depending on what that something is, waiting can be tiring and even anxiety inducing. Waiting to hear back from a job or a doctor can induce panic and create a monologue that ripples through your psyche– causing doubt.

Resting, on the other hand, is doing nothing and being paused to regenerate, to rest, to gather power and energy like a tropical storm over the ocean, in warm air, until it reaches its final form of a hurricane.

So are you waiting or are you resting?

The choice is yours, but mine is clear. I’m resting– it’s a sabbath between two roles — one in the past, and the other is simply someday, somewhere, sometime– but I’ll be ready.