Husband Father Teacher Pilgrim

First attempt at streaming video

This is my first attempt at streaming video. I am using Viddler.

Hey. it actually worked this time. You beauty!

Touching base

Hi

Just touching base with you...

I am trying to get organised for the year and prune back a lot of my commitments at the same time.

I took people's comments on board about overdoing it. So I am not writing here in the morning. That was too hard... and I kept coming across in a negative tone. Also I am cutting back my personal blog keeping to just this blog.  The adjustment will take a bit of work. I was writing in the morning because at least I could get some done. It was the first thing I did. That way I avoided having to cope with distractions. Writing in the evening takes a lot more discipline because by then the day is running at full speed and it is very hard to slow it down enough to do any reflective writing. But I want to and i will try and I will see what happens.

I am pruning back commitments. I have resigned from Dayspring. I am cutting back a lot of online connections. I am trying to focus on what are now the core areas of my life. I am hoping to be able to give more quality time to the tings that matter right now in my life rather than being spread too thinly over everything that interests me. Its taking a bit of time to work through that process but I hope to be in a much better place on the other side of it.

In terms of getting organised for the year... I am attempting to get databases organised so that I can better manage my parent contact. I have succeeded in getting parent contact to a very high level (and others are starting to follow me Yay!) but it takes a lot of organisation to manage all that information. I am using File maker to create linked databases. Not being competent in database creation I am learning as I go and it is taking more time than I would like. But again... I hope to be in  much better state once I'm finished.

The whole ICT in education thing is still raging. I can no longer "get away" with ignoring "the rules" and am going to have to stand up and fight for mp3 player and mobile phone use in class. I don't want to do it. I just want to get on with teaching. But I refuse to enforce ridiculous rules, and I can't hide in a corner anymore, so I have no alternative.

Now all this is happening while the school year is in full swing with the normal teaching load. So its a bit hard to hang out and chat with all this going on.

As always i hope to have a bit more time to hang out and chat soon.

Regret, nostalgia... and other stupid stuff

This is a reflection piece... trying to sort my thinking out. I'm not sure that is will make much sense. Read on at your own peril. :)

On Tuesday evening, Clare and Tyson, have an open house round in Bishopgate St. I have started turning up. So far, its been just me and sometimes Mr 5. He enjoys company and loves doing puzzles. Clare and Tyson have a number of jigsaw puzzles. They like having him there.

Anyway... We talked about Dayspring. There is a new group starting the Grad Dip in spiritual direction.  Now I am not so certain that I should have resigned from Dayspring. Ah... its just regret.

Regret is a funny thing and it grows more poignant as I grow older. I wonder if it significantly clouds my thinking. I suspect that I resort to rationalisation and nostalgia to cope with the regret. I find myself saying to myself that the best of my life is over... that I only have one more shot at some significant qualification... and I have to decide... what will I decide for... a PhD? A Grad Dip in spiritual direction?

But then Tyson and I get talking about mathematical conundrums and I find myself longing to do more real maths. But school maths and undergraduate maths is mostly rule following and hoop jumping. It takes so damn long before you get to do real mathematics of any significance... and I start pondering again if it is worth going back and picking up mathematics... giving it another try to get to post grad level where the "real maths" starts...

God, life is full of dreams and unfulfilled desires... all of them good... very few of them realised. Sigh!

Did I do the right thing in resigning from the Dayspring Guiding Committee? I think so. It doesn't  prevent me from pursuing my studies in spiritual direction... actually it makes it easier... it makes it simpler... I can focus on being a student.

Do I have only one shot left at a significant qualification? Nah! That's bullshit. Its just ego... needing to control. I have no idea how long I have left to live and I have no idea what the quality of that life will be.

Careful pruning of social network

Typical morning energy profile: euphoria for a few minutes at being up early, then a long haul through a trough of weariness. This long haul makes writing difficult.

Two mugs of strong coffee, a barocca and a check on twitter later I am feeling  a little better. Sorry to dribble on like this but it is as much as I can do to just keep writing.

Checking on twitter and reading the replies from folk in my network gives me a real boost. It also gives me a link into this mornings post.

I need to prune my social network. It has grown too large for me to handle, particularly during a teaching term. My blog reader just chokes up with unread blog feeds and my email gets cluttered with far too many announcements.

The email will be easy to prune. I just need to turn some of the announcements off. In particular I can turn off the google alerts. I set these up when I was establishing my network. I don't need any more contacts, feeds etc.

Similarly, I don't need to the Technorati watch list that comes into my blog feeder. It can be turned off. And there are some easy decisions. Things like: I can unsubscribe to feeds from Game blogs. If I had the time, these are interesting and helpful. The generation that is coming through school now is a gaming generation and it helps a bit to stay in touch with that. But it only helps a bit... not enough to worry about in a busy and full day.

Beyond that though... it starts to get hard. What criteria do I use to prune by? Date last posted? That won't work. I know what a busy and full life is like. Sometimes you just can't post for a while. Number of times I interact with blog? No. I would just end up with an echo chamber of my own thoughts. At this stage, I don't have any firm criteria. I suppose... I hope... that as i work with the leviathan that I have created I will gain some insight into what makes a good core social network.

I'll keep you posted :)

Goodbye Dayspring

I have just withdrawn my nomination for the Dayspring guiding committee. The AGM is today and my name would have gone forward to renew my place on the committee.

I have been considering it over the last few days. I have been thinking about how I could possibly fir in everything that i want to do this year and realised that I was not going to be able to. So what would have to go?

Well... my passion for education is very strong and just seems to be growing. Obviously that is not going to go. And I need paid work to help pay the bills anyway and that is the only paid work that I have.

I can not continue to ignore the needs of the family house for renovation and repair. In fact, we have committed ourselves to the bank for further funds for just that purpose. So I am committed there and that is going to take a good chunk of time. This is quite apart from the significant chunks of time that go into just being available for my wife and children.

I will not give up my own personal routines of exercise and meditation. These are what define me and assist me to make sense out of an otherwise rather chaotic existence.

My passion for Dayspring is waning... it is a rather obtuse connection anyway. It does not provide us with us with a context for our community (The Montgomerys). I am not in a position to be a spiritual director except in the sense that I am already... a conversation partner. And... compared to middle school education... my interest in adult education is not strong.

So out of the three major commitments that I have attempted to juggle over the last year Dayspring has to go.

A few other related thoughts...

I can see my passion for middle school education will continue to grow stronger. In fact, i can see that I will need to take up the opportunity to complete a doctorate so that I can bring some intellectual clout to middle school reform.

Since Dayspring is not providing a suitable matrix for the development of real daily community, then we will have to look elsewhere. I am in conversation with others which I hope will be more fruitful. The small Dayspring community may well become part of that matrix but it is in no position yet to provide a matrix.

While I have been part of the guiding committee, it has been difficult for me to get spiritual direction (due to relational conflicts). With some distance between me and the committee I hope to be in a better position to connect with the spiritual direction that Dayspring offers.

Why? But what does it do?

Why? But what does it do? How will I benefit? What is its purpose?

I was barraged with questions of this type yesterday twice. The first one was over a social networking tool: Plaxo. The second one was over imageless-wordless prayer.

On a Friday morning we have a meeting of teachers who teach year 8 maths, so that we can track together. Also at this meeting we (the IT savvy ones) are trying to draw the other reluctant souls into using our middle school maths blog for parents. After this meeting and while one of the IT reluctant souls was still in the office, I noticed that he had Plaxo because I was looking up his details in my address book to set him up with an edubloggers account.

When I commented and praised him for it... I got a tirade of questions about what was the point of it and how was it useful blah blah blah blah. I did not realize that i was being wound up. Damn. :)

As an intuitive type I am not very good at explaining things that I consider obvious. I suppose that is one of the reasons that I use constructivist strategies in teaching. I much prefer to help people to work things out for themselves than to have to give detailed explanations. I actually get really annoyed when people want to be spoon fed.

Then last night, I was talking to Tim. He kept drilling me about silent imageless prayer. He kept on with, stuff like "there must be a reason why you do it, there must be some benefit, you must get something out of it, why else would you do it.... blah blah blah blah

But there is only one reason... because it takes me outside of that cause and effect prison. There is no benefit, there is no effect. I do it to be present to God outside of all that human knowledge traffic. This is no benefit, there is no effect because there is no language. There is simple presence. Full stop.

And that is the greatest stumbling block. It is so simple. It is too simple for most people.

I guess it may be related to intuitive personality types vs sensory personality types. Intuitive types are content with being present. They don't need words, explanations, cause and effect. And I am intuitive, so maybe that's part of an explanation. Sensory types need words, they need explanation, they need cause and effect. They need to know how something works. So, maybe simple presence is too hard for them to grasp. I don't know.

Anyway... for me, being intuitive is a strength and a weakness. Its a strength in that I can be content in a wordless, imageless space. Its a weakness in that I get annoyed when I have to provide for others, what are, for me, trivial unnecessary explanations.

Banks and home renovation... scary stuff.

Well... we've done it. We have been to the bank and have turned the equity in our house into available funds.  We have been to the banks and arranged a loan against the equity for the purpose of household renovation.

The house and yard really needs work.

There are several trees that need removing and relacing.

The fence is run down. I have repaired it several times. We would like to replace it with something more substantial so that we can create an alfresco court yard at the front door.

The lawn is ruined, along with much of the garden. The bore broke down over a long hot dry summer and we had no desire to stand out there with hose. It has long needed replacing with something more suitable to the climate anyway.

The old front porch is due for replacement. Its one of those ones that used to have an iron work fence. The fence was cut off by a previous owner. The iron that remained embedded in the concrete has rusted and split the concrete. We want to replace the concrete with wooden decking as part of the alfresco area.

The house has no been painted since we moved in nearly 13 years ago. I have had a go once or twice as has Carolyn, but without the funds to follow through and complete it, we have run out of motivation and left the rooms we were working on, unfinished. Now that we have the funds... I can follow through and complete the work.

The old heating systems in the house need to be replaced. What we have still functions and was good for its time. But its past it and thre are much more efficient systems available now. So we intend to replacing them.

I am not an accountant's boo lace. I do not have a mind like a spreadsheet. So, I do not know that we have got the best. I do not know that we can really afford to serivce the loan. I have to trust the bank manager, that he knows what he is doing.

So forward we go in the strange land of home renovation.

Sleep still a feral beast

Yesterday morning I had to go back to bed and get some more sleep. I just couldn't wake up. I guess my  sleep deficit had become too great.

However, a better morning this morning: I got up and had a shower first thing. That helped. I'll have to use showers more often to wake myself up so that I can be more attentive and productive.

Though I am still unable to convince myself to stop and prepare for bed early enough in the evening. Last night I stopped at 9:30 am but then thought I would just clean out the old entries and categories from another of my blogs. Two hours later I was in bed.

So I am up this morning and doing well, but only after 4 1/2 hours of sleep. Not enough to sustain me.

Is this ridiculous?

Up at 4 am. So tired. So difficult to keep going. I have to remind myself of the benefits of pushing through this dark tunnel of weariness.

1. I will feel much better about myself if I am blogging regularly. Also pushing through and forcng myself to write will wake my sluggish brain.
2. I will feel better about myself if am meditating regularly. It is very difficult to sit still and silent when I am so tired. But at least I am here and not asleep.
3. I will feel better about myself if I get out into the morning air and get daily morning exercise. It has the immediate effect of refreshment. It has the long term effect of increasing my metabolic rate, thus making me healthier.

But having said all that I am still so so so tired. At what point do I say this is ridiculous and go back to bed?

So... Russel, how are you doing?

In the mornings I am doing ok with my routine ... sort of. I've just go to NOT check email ad news feeds, coz that takes up too time... like this morning. Its 5:30 already and i should have headed off to the gym already.

But the evening? I'm not doing so well. I am letting my self get distracted when I get home and I am not getting back to my readings, blogging or meditation.

So... I need to work on doing nothing in the evening until I have attended to my evening routine.

A random thought...

As a "would be if I could be" Benedictine oblate, I cycle my way through the Rule of Benedict commentary by Joan Chittister. Currently in the section on the details of Daily prayer. Chittister does a good job of bring out the best of Benedict... but otherwise it reads like the biblical book of Leviticus, so far is it from my life.  Oh well, its the spirit of Benedict that' worth emulating, even if the literal living out of the rule is impossible.