When you are walking towards your maker
Be prepared with the biggest machine gun
Point it right between their eyes
And ask them first, ‘What have I done?’

Ask your questions, demanding proof
Let there be no pulling of the leg
Your maker may only pronounce the truth
‘What came first, the chicken or the egg?’

---

Today I’m feeling:

Pretty good but a little tired despite sleeping quite well. 

I can feel my muscles aching from the exercising that I’ve been doing.  Not just aching but feels like them splitting and dividing under my skin.  It’s a tolerable pain that indicates growth, at least to my monkey brain.  It doesn’t feel like an injury though my right shoulder is still definitely injured.  I need to find some exercises where I can still use my arms and chest without injuring the shoulder further.  I adapted my normal arms workout this morning to compensate and that went ok.

Today I’m grateful for:

Bronwyn sending me some old photos of me, my mum and my dad.  These are pictures that my mum had and I had seen from time to time in my youth. 

They were passed onto Bronwyn to leave for Hayden in the future but I’m glad to see them again. 

I also found out that there was a book that my mum wrote quotes and poetry in and I’m interested to see that at some point.

The best thing about today was:

Teaching the new grade 10 class and describing what would happen in real life if they failed to do the work that they are employed to do, just as some students did last week for my class work when I wasn’t there and assigned them something to do in my absence. 

I described our classroom as the place of employment, myself as the boss and them as the employees.  I showed them on the board that I was promoting some of my employees and demoting others and that in our classroom this would be indicated by grades. 

Everyone started at grade 2 (in the middle) but the students who did my work are now at grade 3 whilst those that didn’t are now at grade 1.  This certainly got everyone’s attention.  I told them that in a real-life work situation, they would likely no longer have a job!

I really enjoyed explaining this and I could see the satisfaction on the newly promoted students faces.  All they had to do was what was asked and they’ve been rewarded.  I feel like there was some real learning happening and it made me happy to see.  I kept the mood light throughout all this but they understood the ramifications of their actions.

In the second act of synchronicity for the day, I read this in an online newsletter and messaged the class to discuss its meaning:

“’I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday’”

Even writing this is making me feel somewhat smug! Haha.

Something I learned today?

There’s an ant species that’s unique to New York City, known as the ManhattAnt.

Review your acts, and then for vile deeds chide yourself, for good be glad. — Discourses 3.10

I’ve been trying to get Baipad to describe her own personality to me because she described her cousin’s personality as similar to her own but she could only answer with ‘you already know.’  I tried to explain that we see ourselves differently from how others see us. 

This morning I sat down with her and Jan, with Apple sitting opposite and I said, ‘Come on, let’s play a game.  Here’s a list of adjectives, pick ten that describe Apple and we had fun doing that for ten minutes.  As I left I told them that tomorrow we will do the same for Jan.  And at the weekend I will ask Baipad again to see if she can answer for herself.

I sat with one of my poor grade 7 students (Nut) in class this morning and helped her a lot with trying to understand the text we were reading and how to answer the questions.  Some days she is ok to accept my help and today was one of those.  When I went to help others she pulled me back to finishing helping her first.  I was glad to see this and I think she was glad of my help.  She will never be a great English speaker but she is doing all that I ask of her.

I sent a message to JubJib reminding her that perfection is a myth.  She happily admits to requiring perfection from herself.

What do I need to embrace about myself?

I’ve become more accepting of my own foibles as I’ve aged.  As a sign of maturity, I don’t tend to do things that I wish I hadn’t any more.  I’m equating embracing and acceptance here but they feel quite comparable at this age.  I am happy with myself and understand myself very well.  I know my weaknesses and attempt to improve them slowly without punishing myself.

Where do I hope to be one year from now?

This is an interesting question for me this time as I feel a little in limbo.  I am very happy where I am but also considering where do I go from here?

I could quite comfortably maintain my life the way it is.  I have no real goals to aim for these days, just continuous improvement.  This feels possible due to stability and not having to deal with other stresses that come with the pursuit of new things.

In this way, I’m quite happy to defer to Amy’s ideas about what she wants in the future.  That may be a big shock when it comes time for action though, this I know.

Should I have a specific goal for this coming year?  I don’t feel particularly ambitious.

25 THINGS ABOUT LIFE I WISH I HAD KNOWN 10 YEARS AGO – 5. Exercise Daily. I didn’t get this until recently. A healthy body is where you have to start everything in life. If you can’t build a healthy and strong body, what CAN you build in life?

I was quite athletic as a child, particularly loving football but once I discovered booze and cigarettes that all slowly went downhill.

Since finally being mostly free of those vices I have started exercising and by doing it first thing in the morning I’ve been able to slowly introduce and lengthen the time spent doing it as I also slowly started to feel the benefits.

Previously I would consistently make the mistake of overdoing the exercise when I would feel the need to get back into it.  It’s a mistake probably 80% of us make.

But as I was reading more about developing habits and starting small and as I’ve been teaching my kids about doing things little by little, that idea has slowly slipped into my own brain to find a better way.

Perhaps when I was younger I didn’t want to admit that I was aging.  As it took many years to develop this beer belly I’ve accepted that it will take many years to lose it too.

Again, as synchronicity goes, I also just read this:

“The key to exercising regularly, losing weight, being more productive, and achieving success is understanding how habits work.” – Charles Duhigg