Month: September 2021

Every couple of months, I get a phone call from someone asking, “I always wanted to start something like this. How did you do it?”

If there was a secret, as if there was a trick that needed to be revealed, I could market it online. Sell it for a premium price.

There is no shortcut to doing something that hasn’t been done before.

The only thing I look back on is the long list of mistakes. Over and over again, one failure on top of another. And that is why we have succeeded. We didn’t have the answer, we started with a question and assertions.

Recently, I went over to one of the big retailers to post a help wanted sign for our nonprofit. I’ve done it before numerous times, but as customary, I asked for permission.

The floor manager stunned by my request said, “We don’t post jobs for competing businesses.”

Really? This is a major chain with hundreds of locations spread across the US valued at billions of dollars–and they’re worried that if I post a job on the community board that I am some how competing with their bottom line.

Of course, that is silly. This floor manager couldn’t see past the manual. Couldn’t reach in to their humanity to recognize that a teen suicide prevention nonprofit in their area is not competition.

It isn’t their fault. They had been brainwashed into thinking that the pie is fixed. And if my slice gets bigger that means their slice is smaller.

We spend an exorbitant amount of emotional labor wishing for things to be different instead of finding something productive.

Staring at your soufflé isn’t going to help it bake any faster so you might as well do something else.

We become so attached to the outcomes that we end up ignoring the opportunities to create more art.

Taylor Hawkins, the legendary drummer for Foo Fighters, tells this story about the moment he knew he was a drummer.

He was at a friends house and his friend tells him to pick up the drum sticks and to follow along to his beat. Hawkins immediately picked it up and his friend stunned turned to Hawkins and said, “You’re a drummer.”

The story suggests that Hawkins had this innate gift to drumming. But that is unlikely. What is more likely is from there, Hawkins spent the next 20 years perfecting his craft through thousands of hours of practice.

Sometimes though, it helps when someone gives us a label and we embrace it.

We tell ourselves stories of inefficiency, that we are frauds, that we are not as good as the other drummers–until someone tells us we are who we set out to be.

Beloved author, Neal Gaiman, has noted that he has to be extremely bored in order to write.

Most of us fear being bored. To sit with our own thoughts.

As a result, we fill the space. Occupy our mind with junk food media and don’t allow space to think, to explore and to be creative.

When is the last time you sat down just to think?

Perhaps, your greatest hit is just bursting at the seams if you just give it time to reflect.

It’s not out of thin air. It’s not from the Muse or the Dameon.

Good ideas come after lots of bad ideas.

By every measure, most of these blogs are average. That is what the math dictates. But every once in a while, I write something exceptional. One that I am proud of. Because I am willing to have a plethora of bad ideas on the table before the good ones surface.

What does your discard pile look like? How big is it? We don’t know what the next big hit will be. Just get to work.

I’ve written in the past about how I don’t believe in luck. I have dramatically changed my mind of this.

Luck has so much to do with where we are and who we have become. Luck plays such a factor in the choices in front of us. It’s luck when I didn’t choose the color of my skin and yet has opened so many doors of possibility. It’s luck when I was born in a position of power or given the benefit of the doubt.

What’s important to understand is if I wrote do I have to stay with it? Do I have the courage to admit I was wrong and pivot directions?

There are lots of things I have been wrong about. Most of the time I am wrong rather than right. As a culture do we have the tolerance for people to change their minds? Do we have a path for people to backtrack? An invitation to sit on the other side of the table?

If we just want to prove everyone that we are right, then we won’t allow the space for people to be wrong either.

It’s inconsistent to send our kids to school to learn about science while telling them to ignore the science behind vaccines and mask wearing.

If we are going to ignore the health department recommendations, why even have one?

Vaccine passports are not new. Take a look at what we currently require students to have before attending school:

“I worry about the oxygen levels getting to my kids brain.” Yet, some will let their kids play outside during dangerous air quality index levels (AQI).

For those who are LDS, the Prophet is a spokesman for God (who also happens to be a former surgeon) said, “We have prayed often for this literal godsend.” But many will proclaim, “Stay in your lane!”

There is no direct biblical references to exempt from vaccines. The Pope has said that getting the vaccine is “an act of love.” Plenty of references in the Bible to love your neighbor.

Without googling, tell me at least two active ingredients in Tylenol? Most can name one but what else is in there? We ingest things all the time that we don’t know what’s in them.

Tell us how many years of experience you have in studying epidemiology? And how many hours per day do you spend on Facebook? Where are you getting your news?

“But you have a 98.2% of survival from COVID.” That’s an oversimplification of the data. While it is true that out of the 34+ million known cases 600,000+ people have died–you get a 1.8% survival rate. However, the average for the entire country cannot be used to calculate an individual’s chance of dying from the virus. Different circumstances for different people. 99% of those dying from COVID are not vaccinated.

96% of doctors are now vaccinated. If the vaccine is dangerous we will see the biggest shortage in medical professionals in our modern history.

There have been over 5 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine administered world wide. Where are all the dead bodies? 33% of the world population have now received at least one dose. It’s not brave to wait, it’s hubris.

“But we don’t know the long term effects.” Long term effects from the vaccine are extremely unlikely. If you are going to have a long term effects, they typically show up within six weeks of innoculation.

“But blood clots!” Yep, and you are at a much higher risk for those with COVID.

There are currently 99 vaccines in clinical trials. Not all of them have made it. The speed of which these vaccines were produced are a miracle. And at the same time, medical professionals have been studying COVID for the last decade, many have predicted it would be the next global outbreak and with global coordination (and a streamlined process of production while testing) scientists were able to produce a vaccine in record time. Actually, it isn’t a miracle. It’s what happens when we work together.

mRNA vaccines are quite clever. Plenty of information available to understand how the vaccine works. The virus is never injected into you and it does dissolve out of your system.

The culture works better when we have rules that we follow. For instance, if I speed in a school zone, well, it’s been agreed upon that it’s important to slow down around these areas because we don’t want children (who tend to run out in the middle of the street) to get hit by vehicles. So, we manage the risks. By opting out of a mask, you are not limiting the exposure to you. Wearing a mask is part of living with a community. If you live alone in the backwoods of Montana then that is a different discussion. It’s a choice if I decide to wear a helmet or not on a motorcycle. Doesn’t really effect me. But choosing to not mask up does.

The bottom line: We are not talking about vaccines or masks. We are hearing the amygdala. We are talking about ideology while not properly assessing risk.

Many are seduced into believing that if we just replaced the players the system will get back to working in favor of the people.

But I don’t see that as the solution.

Switch out the players in our political system and over time you will get the same results.

Yet, if we change term limits, how campaigns raise money, how they spend it, put guardrails on Google and Facebook, eliminate gerrymandering, streamline the voting process, bring in a third party (or eliminate them), address the electoral voting system…

And now you’ve changed the system.

Change the system and you will change outcomes.

We get so used to thinking a certain way after long exposure time in that system. That we have to revert back to the way things have always been done because that is what got us here. How unimaginative.

Sometimes we need to step out and look at the landscape. Ask ourselves, “Why am I thinking the way I am thinking?” or “How come these are the options I am presented with?”

The general spacing for wall studs is 16 inches on center.

You can take a tape measure and get really close to 16 inches. And if you want to even get more precise you can mark center on your stud.

But alas, you can never get it exactly on center.

You go for close enough otherwise you would never finish your project. As a result walls are not quite square, but they are “good enough”.

Most of the things we do are fine at good enough. We don’t have to do everything perfect to do it well.

Yet, we treat art as this separate thing. If I am going to write music lyrics it has to be perfect. So we fall into the trap of polishing. Polish, polish, polish because it has to be perfect before we move on.

Again, how would you ever finish?

Write your best work and move on to the next piece. Make it good enough–not crap we just send out to the ether but our best work we got. The point is to do it again, perfecting our craft.