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This idea of “What, So What, Now What” has come up for me twice this past week in distinct ways. The first time was like a formal introduction where I heard about it for the first time on the TED Radio Hour on NPR. The podcast was about education and how we may try to rethink school. “So what, now what” was a saying of one of the speakers who reformed a school in an underserved community (I’ll link the whole thing below). The second time, which happened today was more of a tangential encounter.

This morning I participated in an improv class for this Informal Education Certification program I am in.  We did several exercises involving story telling and improvising (obviously). The instructor often would make little asides about how certain exercising or improv concepts connect to real life. One of the big ideas for improv was to always “say yes” to what another person gives you; no matter what direction you had envisioned in your head for the scene and no matter how frustrated you are with someone for not saying what you wanted them to say, you had to accept it and move on. This reminded me of “So what, now what”. Just like in life, things aren’t always going to go how I envision it, the best I can do is accept my current reality and choose what I want to do from there.

This has a lot to do with attitude. Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. Now what’s happened? So what am I gonna do about it… probably something dumb.

TIATF: My pups, my house, my education

http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/535044918/rethinking-school

Just finished Better by Atul Gawande. It was a fun read full of some really interesting anecdotes. One of the things Gawande talks about is this idea of positive deviance which basically recognizes that there are uncommon cases of success that can be attributed to certain behaviors. If we want to improve ourselves or our community we should look for those positive deviants and find out what makes them successful. And I use the term “successful” to mean really and type of positive outcome.

If we want to become positive deviants ourselves, we need to do something that no one else is doing, to try a different way of doing things. This reminds me of a quote attributed to Alexander Graham Bell (I did a project on him back in high school), “An inventor looks upon the world and is not contented with things as they are. He wants to improve whatever he sees, he wants to benefit the world; he is haunted by an idea.”

Growing up I always wanted to be an inventor, then I realized how impractical that was. Though I don’t think any of the great inventors grew up wanting to be inventors, they simply had the mindset that A.G.B. described above. And I believe that’s the case for many contemporary positive deviants; they aren’t satisfied with the status quo, they see an opportunity for change and they make that change. Anyone can be an inventor, anyone can be a positive deviant; what separates the idea from reality is often times effort and tenacity.

TIATF: My job, metabolism, technology

…about two cousins that are often confused with each other. One of them was always the more popular, the other often forgotten or unknown. Yes as you may have guessed, I am talking about light and pigment.

You see, when people talk about the color wheel and the classic “primary colors”  they are usually referring to pigments and the subtractive color wheel, which has cyan, magenta, and yellow as its primary colors (although many learned it as red, yellow, blue, which is actually different, but that is out of the scope of this discussion).

The oft’ forgotten cousin is light and the additive color wheel which has the primary colors red, green, and blue.

Now what’s all this additive/ subtractive business about, we are talking colors not math! Well don’t you fret, there is no real math involved, but let’s break down what we mean:

Light is additive because the colors we perceive are combinations of red, green, and blue light. White light is the addition of all three. If you look really close at your TV or computer screen you will see that the picture is actually made of teeny tiny pixels that are either red, green, or blue. TVs – Light

Pigments are considered subtractive because their perceived color is a result of  removing other colors. Magenta pigments appear magenta because they absorb green light and reflect red and blue light. If you look at a magazine you will see that most of the printed images are made up of dots of cyan, magenta, and yellow and also black (a combination of all pigments). Printers – Pigment

For clarity’s sake, because I know this can get a bit confusing; in both cases, what you are actually perceiving is light, so in a sense pigments do utilize the additive color wheel. Pigments alter how light is perceived by absorbing certain wavelengths of light and reflecting others. That reflected light is the subject to the additive color wheel.

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This post is what resulted from an interaction I had at work today. I had forgotten some of the details about light and pigments so thought I’d revisit it and try to flesh it out.

It makes all the difference. Gratitude is all about recognizing and acknowledging the good of what you have. I am going to try and be more grateful.

One of the blogs I follow posted this exercise that I thought might be worth trying out (I’ll post a link to it below). Basically it involves identifying one’s own privileges and grievances on two separate lists. One list goes up where you see it every day, the other in a place that you may see once a week or once a month or once a year; you choose which goes where.

I will also end each post listing 3 things I am grateful for, and hopefully I’ll be able to come up with 3 different things every day.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2017/06/make-two-lists.html

Things I am grateful for:

[I’ll start off with the gimmes]

My family, my friends, my health

I volunteer in the NICU of my local hospital. When I went in to wash my hands before my shift there was an MD in there also washing up. She was facing the sink and didn’t look up as I came in. I removed my volunteer coat and placed it on the shelf leaving only my white undershirt. The doc then turns around and we exchange greetings. She then asks how my baby is doing. A little shocked I just stutter, “Oh… I… I’m a volun–”

“–Ah you’re a volunteer,” she said as if trying to finish my sentence, “My bad, you never know these days, parents are getting younger and younger…”

“Haha…yep…have a good day,” I say as she begins to walk out and she reciprocates.

At first this just got me thinking about life and about when I do hope to have kids of my own. Then I thought about what she said… younger and younger… what’s this lady talkin’ ’bout younger and younger. When she was little most adults were probably having kids in their early 20s… but maybe she thought I was in high school.

Anyways, when I’m holding the babies at the hospital it’s hard not to think about being a father. By no means am I in any rush at all, it’s just near impossible not to think about it with a tiny baby in your arms just staring at you.

It was also kind of awkward later that day because I was helping out a nurse by holding a baby during feeding and the baby’s parents came. They knew I was a volunteer, but I could feel the mom’s gaze tear into me as soon as she walked in. I am not allowed to move the baby myself and the nurse was in the medicine room getting some milk, so I just sat there with the mom watching as her daughter was sleeping the in the arms of a stranger. I wasn’t sure if I should wait for the nurse and risk getting my arms torn off or offer to hand the baby over. Luckily Mom had enough just decided to take her, and so I gladly handed her off. Mom didn’t acknowledge me, not so much as a thank you, as if I was some sort of android who holds crying babies then goes back to its dock in the supply closet. Of course, she has every right to her baby and to be protective of her, but lady I’m a flippin’ volunteer its not like your baby is going to imprint on me. But you know,

I want to be a bit more intentional with my choices and actions; to have a more purpose behind everything I do. There was a reddit post that got pretty popular in which one user talked about doing something, at least one thing everyday to get you closer to your goals. He referred to this as “No Zero-Days”. The whole post was about discipline and self-esteem if I recall correctly. Whether or not you have personal struggles with these types of things the post it worth a read.

Currently my go-to for avoiding a zero day is learning Spanish on Duolingo.

I chose the picture of the blocks because when I built it, as well as when I built the double bridge which was on an earlier post, I had to be very intentional about how, where, and even when I placed each block. There are no screws or glues, so I couldn’t force it to work, I had to think about how each block would contribute to the structure or not. (Though perhaps excluding the twist on the top from this discussion)