out of practice

I helped run tech for a funeral today. We had a video to play, recordings for the family on cassette and CD, a video feed to the overflow, five singing family members, and a couple other things. As the tech side of events goes, this was pretty easy. I’ve dealt with much more.

However, I was pretty anxious for the first half of the service.

I am out of practice.

When I run sound all the time, when I operate equipment all the time, I find it easier to relax, to handle the challenges. When I do it every few months, I start confident, but soon begin to worry. I know how to do everything, but I forget how to do everything at the same time with an audience and a deadline.

Which makes me think about conversation, about friendship, about prayer, about exercise, about writing. For each of those and many other skills, we know how to do them. We can describe the steps, we can point to times that we have done each. However, we may not make a practice of doing them. And then, when the time comes, what we used to be able to do with ease is difficult, frustrating, uncertain.

“I can run sound” is much different than “I do run sound” is much different than “I have run sound”. The former implies a competence, the latter, a potential. The middle phrase, “I do” points to an ongoing experience, a commitment to staying in practice.

“I can carry on a conversation” is much different than “I have conversed with people.” What I want to work on, what shows a commitment, is “I am talking with Nancy all the time.”

I realized today that if I want to run tech occasionally, I need to run tech regularly. I need to stay in practice at what matters. If I want to have friends, pray, exercise, converse…I need to actually do them.

Or quit saying that I can.

mixed messages

A couple weeks ago, I celebrated six months at my new job with an update to my bosses.

To be more accurate, at a meeting of our church leaders, I talked about some things I’ve learned during the past six months. It was challenging to know exactly what to say, particularly since I needed to say it in order to find out what I was thinking.

I ended up building a powerpoint deck. Before you panic, those of you bored with powerpoint, let me tell you what I did.

• I created my own background. I wrote the words “becoming less clueless” on post-it strips, put them on my desk blotter, shot a picture with my phone, sent it to flickr, and pulled in into the show.
• I shot a series of 1-2 minute video clips of ideas that I wanted to capture. I used my webcam, and moved it to a new position for each clip, so there was different wall of my office showing. By prerecording, I was able to shoot and reshoot until I got the time and language focused. (In the screen capture, where you see my picture is where the video clip is).
• I created images to pull into the slide to illustrate the commentary. (That language, by the way, is intentional. Rather than commenting on the illustrations, I illustrated the thoughts. ) Some of the images were lists I wrote and photographed. Some of the images were screen captures using [prnt scrn]. Some were images I had created. Inserting all these images allowed me to have lots of visual information on the screen for a long time, allowing people to listen to me and let their eyes wander.
• After each video played, I commented live, if necessary. I also skipped one of the videos and told the story even quicker.

For a presentation that ran at 8:15 on a Monday evening, this worked. The format helped me stay focused, helped 8 guys have something different to see and hear, and allowed me to be linear in a non-linear fashion. It even allowed me to videoblog in a live setting.

So, how are you finding the skills you are building on-line helping you in real-time presentations?

what are you lookin at

what are you lookin at

Originally uploaded by jon.swanson

No. Really.

What are you looking at?

It’s Sunday night. Most of the western world, the part that treats Monday as the beginning of the work week is spending the evening looking at going back to work tomorrow.

A friend is looking at burying her mother on Tuesday. Another friend is looking at his heart, praying that the beat settles down, since 50 is young for a pacemaker in a guy teaching high school in South America. Other friends are looking at moving to Europe in fewer days than they have fingers and toes to track.

So with all that, I think I’ll look at hope.

You can, too.

That’s Hope in the picture.

And there’s more hope where she gets hers. I’m positive.

help me think about generations

I’m spending part of my Sunday mornings talking with a group of about 30 people who are older than 75 (mostly). When we started, my desire was to help them have tools for understanding and talking with and praying for their grandchildren and others who are between 18 and 34. It was a noble idea, but I’ve been struggling with what to say.

And then it occurred to me that several of you are in that age bracket or are close to it. And all of you are wonderful thinkers. And I need help thinking about some ideas.

1. Because the old (on average) no longer can teach the tools necessary for cultural survival, what do they have to teach? Or are they irrelevant as far as passing on culture? (Intentionally overstated. Read the explanation)

I think that in the old days (whenever that was) skills and values were passed from generation to generation. You taught your child how to farm or build furniture or can tomatoes. In the process you explained why, you talked about people and how they think. The older you were, the greater your familiarity with the tools of the tribe. As a result, up to a certain age, anyway, there was a rationale for respecting elders.

I think that information and digital technology turned that upside down. Because the basic tools of the information age are information tools, if you are not adept with learning new tools, you struggle. And the new tools are far more different from the old tool than a hand saw is different than a table saw. Saws don’t beget saws. Information begets information begets the need for tools for processing more and more.

Digital natives and analog natives live in different worlds. And in the former, youth is favored far more than in the latter.

2. If I created a project that had different ages talking, on video, about what scares them, would you watch it? (assume decent production, assume strong editing)

3. If you are 35 or under, why do you need people who are 70 or older? What do you want from them? What, honestly, do they have to teach you that you would listen to?

Thanks for your help.

Small change

I wasn’t happy.

I was doing some work around the house a couple weeks ago and decided to step on our bathroom scale.

I wasn’t happy at all.

I have a number in my head of where I “should” be. It isn’t based on research or guidelines or anything like that. It is a number based on what I weighed for a long time. It is my status quo.

When I stood on the scale that recent day, I realized that I am 25 pounds more than that number.

I don’t know when I was last there. I don’t know the last time I measured. I don’t know (or care) what my optimal weight is. What I do know is that somehow, without my paying attention to something changing, my clothing doesn’t fit as well as it did.

I’m not alone.

I don’t mean about the weight thing. I mean about things about us changing without our realization. We have a vague sense of something being different, of something not being quite right. Maybe our conversations are feeling a bit more ragged. Maybe we are aware of more frustration than usual.

But we just don’t get it.

Until we step on the scale. Until we look in the mirror. Until we have the good friend say, “are you okay?”  Until “everything blows up.”

Our reaction at those times is to make radical change, fix everything. Unfortunately, I don’t think that works very well. I mean, there are times when radical change is necessary. Sometimes things just have to stop.

Often, however, radical change means that we pour all our attention into the thing we want to change. And so our lives and conversation and the lives and conversation of everyone around us become about weight (or whatever the issue is). When we tire of that (and when everyone around us tires of that), we switch to the new crisis, the new obsession, the new. .

In many cases, I think, we made small changes which have led-across time-to what seems to be the huge problem. As a result, the answer is to make small changes, habitual changes, sustainable changes, which will take us back.

So I’m going to spend August looking at making small changes. I’m not sure what it will mean. (But we’ll find out together).

The computer.

What is a computer?

I know all the lessons about the pieces of a computer. I taught the class years ago, the class where you needed to teach about the CPU and the peripherals, the input devices and the storage devices.

I don’t mean that. I mean, when someone says, “You spend hours in front of that computer” or “You waste hours in front of that computer”, what is a computer?

The screen, the keyboard, they stand for something. They represent evil or time wasting or some thing.

And I bristle.

When I hear the “you waste” statement, and then discover that the person who is speaking uses their computer primarily to play solitaire, I find I have to agree. Spent that way, the time is wasted.

Of course, if those cards were real, and the person is sitting alone in front of a television, the time is just as wasted. However, in the latter case, the computer isn’t to blame.

When I hear the “you waste” statement, and then discover that the person is talking about someone who plays Microsoft Golf, hour after hour, I find I have to agree. Spent that way, the time is wasted.

Of course, if the clubs were real, and the person is playing five rounds a week, the time may be just as wasted. (Of course, the argument at that point is an argument about fitness or being out in nature or something like that).

When I hear the “you waste” statement and then discover that the person is talking about someone spending hours chatting online, playing Scrabble with people they have never seen, I find that I may agree. Spent that way, the time may be wasted.

Of course, if the people were in the same room playing Scrabble, talking about how messed up the neighbors are or about the problem with Millie’s leg, the time may be just as wasted.

Perhaps a more accurate statement is not, “You waste hours in front of….” But “you (and I) waste hours.” You in your way, I in mine, but neither of us is looking closely at how we are investing our time in people, in growth, in understanding.

Or perhaps we are. Perhaps the time spent playing solitaire online or off is a brief break. Perhaps the time, online or off, interacting with people actually is about friendships, about understanding and working in the lives of other people.

But how can that be true if you haven’t ever seen someone?

Maybe later. For now, let’s agree that the computer can’t take the blame for our use of time and attention. That’s our responsibility.

the potential board

Friday afternoon, I was staring at a wall.

It was a gray wall, a block wall. It was a pretty drab view, unless, of course, you like block walls. As much as I do, I can’t stare at them forever.

As I was looking at the wall, I noticed a board running the length of the wall. It was about nine feet off the floor, give or take a foot. It was just a board, an inch and a half wide, fastened to a block wall.

As you can see, there were also some lovely cabinets and a wastebasket within view as well. All of it was, shall we say, functional. It was not a space you would choose for much of anything.

Except, of course, if you are waiting for the final program of a week-long drama camp. If you were waiting for that kind of program, a block wall is a perfect background, with nothing to draw your attention away from the creativity. If you were waiting for that kind of a program, you would love a space with space, with light, with potential.

And if you are an artist, a photographer, a painter, then a blank block wall with a narrow board would be perfect. Such a wall would give you a place to hang your work, a place where your creativity is evident.

Context is so often boring. Preparation is the uninteresting part. And it is part of every vocation I know. The proofreading, the outlining, the research, the rehearsal, the coding, the registration, the scales, the measuring…all are invisible. All feel like they get in the way of the real work, the fun part.

As I stared at the wall and the board, and then watched the kids and thought about the art, I decided that providing people with potential, creating context, is pretty important. And I realized that spending the time in my own life on building walls and putting up boards is an art as well.

Well-crafted potential matters.

a long history of similar behavior

“Sections of this paper show fine perception. In other places the insight is not as clear. Staying on the topic and dealing deeply with it would bring sharper analysis. Work a little harder. You’ve got good ability.”

I got a B+ on this paper for my intro to sociology class my freshman year in college. It was December, 1976.

It was a paper I wrote on a typewriter. I didn’t write it elsewhere and then type it. I wrote it on the fly.

I found the paper while cleaning out some boxes last week. I found other papers as well: a couple from a grad school seminar, a draft of a paper that I submitted for a conference. All of them bore comments that are almost exactly the same as the one in the picture. Good potential, irregular expression.

Seeing the papers together was a helpful thing for me. It pushed me to reflect on my writing, on my work. I realized how often I stop short of the last draft, of the final pass through the writing, through the thinking. I realized that for all the rest of how I have grown in the past 32 years, in this way I am consistent. But not content.

I have made a steady diet of low-hanging fruit. It is tasty, and takes little labor. It comes easily. But there is this remote possibility that if I invest a bit more time on the fruit higher in the tree, I may, as Dr Lindblade suggested, find sharper analysis.

This isn’t a denial of value in what I’ve done. Far from it. But much has been pretty easy. And this isn’t allowing one comment from the past to infect my thinking. Rather, it is acknowledging a pattern which several people identified. Or, perhaps, it is seeing a pattern in the datapoints that several people provided.

I think I want to find out what would happen if I took the time to focus and reflect and polish.

I think you’ll find out, too.

Thanks for being part of the ride.

nineteen.

A relink for today.

days to live.

days to live.

Originally uploaded by jon.swanson