The Fire Within

In my last post about bike riding , I talked about when you are first learning to ride a bike you have to figure out how to go in a straight line. As we progressed in our bike riding proficiency we realize that going straight is important, but just the start. Once you learn how to maintain balance and keep it straight, you have a whole new set of challenges. Those challenges and how to deal with them contain more lessons for us. The first thing you need to do is learn how to stop. I swear every kid I've ever known, no matter how many times you tell them how to stop their bike, when they start going where they don't want to the feet go down. Pedals get tangled with feet, falls happen, things escalate quickly. You have to learn how to break safely, when you get into a situation that isn't safe you need to slow down or stop. If you don't know how to break things can get very dangerous. In life we have to learn to recognize when we need to slow down or even stop. People c...

Stuck at home, finally taking the big leap with my youngest to learn to ride a bike without training wheels. The beauty of having three kids is you've cut your teeth on teaching the first two how to ride, this one is feeling like a piece of cake. A friend of mine gave me the best advice when I was first teaching my kids to ride, and I continue to use it. To balance better you need to go faster. Your natural instinct is to try and go really slow and balance the best you can. But balancing is a lot harder when you are going slow. When you go fast your momentum keeps you up right. The other piece of advice that I repeat often is to make little adjustments, not big ones. To go in a straight line, when you feel yourself starting to go left your instinct is to jerk it back to the right. Which is always an over correction and quickly turns into what looks like someone emphatically shaking their head no as the wheel jerks back and forth. To keep it straight it takes just the slightest of...

We have been at this shelter at home stage for 6 weeks now. We've settled into a pretty decent routine with work, home schooling, and when the best time to venture out for groceries and other necessities is to limit exposure. We have our days that we order takeout that we look at as a reward. Do the days feel like it is the same thing day in and day out? Certainly. Do we try to find different activities to break up the monotony? Of course, with what limited options we have. Still the repetitive feeling doesn't go away. Many others feel the same way, some feel like they are going to lose their mind if something doesn't change. All we can do is keep on moving forward. Each day its own little victory. Another step forward and closer to the finish line. We don't know how many steps there are but we know each step is progress. We don't have to be a superstar every day, we just need to take a step. In a year we will look back and be amazed at how far we've come. ...

Does anyone else find it ironic we are dealing with a pandemic when our social medial culture talks so much about going viral? The number of people who have a hobby or even make a living trying to get TikTok famous is ridiculous. Frantically checking back on their posts to see how many likes they got. Seth Godin has talked for years about how ideas spread much like a virus. It doesn't matter if the ideas are good or bad, it is a matter of if you can get people to talk and share it. There are people that will try to share anything, just to get the likes and clicks. We all have a voice. We all have a choice on what words we share. If you went viral what would people catch from you?

There are two main topics at the top of everyone's mind right now with COVID-19. The first is obviously the health and wellness of everyone. The second is the economy and the elements related to it. With good reason as unemployment rates soar to levels not seen since the Great Depression. Many predicted we would be heading towards a recession in 2020, long before the economic downturn from the pandemic. If you've looked at your 401k lately you'll know things have taken a big hit. (If you haven't looked, don't, just know that it is a long term investment and look in 2022.) All of this is just another reminder of our need as individuals to have a solid foundation in financial literacy. Most people are finding more time on their hands, what better way to spend it than to figure out how to understand your personal financial situation and what you need to do differently for the next crisis. There might not be a global pandemic but there will always be job losses, medic...

I heard recently all you really need every day is 5 minutes of news. In just 5 minutes you can be updated on the key items going on in your community and world. The key is stopping at 5 minutes because the rest in my opinion is propaganda that media tries to drive home and stir up more clicks and viewers. It doesn't matter if you lean right or left, there is a news source that will bend the narrative to fit whatever picture you want to be painted. If you stop at 5 minutes you have a lot more free time every day. If you have time you aren't reading the latest doomsday or conspiracy stories what can you do with your time? We are going to look back at this time and the level of innovation, art, stories and new ideas that come from this time where we are locked inside will be one of the greatest in history. The reason I know this is it has happened before. This pandemic isn't the first plague that has swept over the world. When you look back over history,  during some of th...

I feel like I have written about this topic before, but given our current situation in the world I think it can't be stated enough. The only things I should worry about are the things I can control. If I can't control it, no amount of worrying will change things so it is wasted energy. If I can control something there isn't any point in worrying, I should take action. I also realize that I don't have a lot of room to worry. We have been lucky in our house that our jobs haven't been impacted. Yes it has been annoying and there is a fear of what happens if we were to catch it, but when I think of people working in hospitals and other high risk jobs my problems pale in comparison. There is a big difference between a less than ideal day and a bad day. For most of us our days are less than ideal now. Life is too short to waste time worrying about things that aren't that big of a deal, even in the middle of a pandemic. Stay safe, be smart, but make the best of eac...

It is interesting to see how people react to the new world we live in. Even more interesting is how people react to others reactions. Social media is an interesting space, it always has been. You have the people who seem to rip on everything and love to argue without facts. A time like this, full of fear, anxiety and a host of questions has only compounded the problem. You also have many people who try to spread positive or uplifting quotes and nuggets of information, just trying to help people make the best of this terrible situation. Sometimes those paths cross and it is an interesting look at human nature. I was reading a post from an author that is known for being very positive, some might even say he is over the top, he's a Pollyanna. He shared a post about how we have a choice in how we react to the situation we are in. Someone came back at him and vilified him for stating such a thing. When there are people losing jobs, getting sick and losing loved ones to tell them it wa...

Today is trash/recycling day and I'm oddly excited about it. Partly because we've been doing some cleaning and finding things we just need to get rid of, which fills up the trash can pretty quickly, so it needs to be emptied. The other reason, I have been looking for ways to be excited and thankful for the little things that make each day unique.  When we are in a time like this where the days start running together I find it important to look for little things to break up each day and have something to make each day unique. I know I'm not alone in this based on the number of times I talk with others and somewhere in the conversation eventually the question is raised, "Wait, what day is it today?" If all we talk about is how it feels like the movie Groundhog Day then that is what we see. If we talk about the uniqueness of each day and the joy of it being trash day each day becomes unique and special.  When we consider that most people will have 25,000-3...