Category motivation

I paused my entries to consider my focus with this particular blog and have decided that since this blog is a branch of my “author” website, I’m going to stay focused on my writing journey and promoting my upcoming book publications with this blog. My job on teaching, childcare, and family will host entries on those themes and you can always catch up with me there. https://www.tsladventures.net/blog

I returned to the writing scene with huge ambition after not having picked up a “pen” in eleven years. I have been writing since I was thirteen. I wrote my first book in a five-subject notebook, which I still have today. I was schooled in English in the ninth grade by a well-respected teacher and author, Daniel Hayes, and this inspired me further. Through college and my decade-plus teaching career I wrote multiple manuscripts, queried agents, saw the good, bad, and ugly with snake oil agents, and editors, won a short story competition, published multiple local articles in magazines, and tried my hand at vanity publishing with my middle grade novel Racing the Rope when print-on-demand technology was just emerging. I have read a lot, and researched a lot.

Then came my childcare business, TSL Adventures, and as I developed this passion, I let my writing go. I was also raising kids so it was a busy time. I feel like I have accomplished many more goals with this business than I ever planned. This coupled with life changes, inspired me to get back in the writing game.

I have spent these last two years developing two manuscripts, both with series potential at a time when self-publication and the business development of writing centered around this modality has amazing potential. I’m excited now to be assembling a team of people to work with to get my writing fully realized and appropriately marketed. What’s more, It has been amazing to see how the eleven-year pause has changed my perceptions on who I am as a writer and what kinds of projects I want to invest in.

As my journey continues I look forward to reflecting on the past, present, and future dreams in the industry. I hope even as the best of this is still emerging that I can inspire as I aspire. I know there are a lot of gifted people out there, hoping to make their dreams come true. We’re all in this together so stay true and follow through!

It’s amazing to think of how little we know ourselves. That cliché expression about living life in hindsight just means that at any given time we don’t know as much about life as we thought, and we don’t fully know ourselves. Why? Because everyday new secrets are revealed that we had not previously known about…pretty much everything, including the essence of who were are.

I don’t know if people change over time as some believe. I think people only discover new things about themselves and put the pieces together about who they were all along and then relish in those new epiphanies. And just when you thought you had a finger on yourself, you discover even more.

So, do we change over time, or is it simply an organic transition from what was not known, to what is now known? Is there a difference?

When I was twenty-two I entered the teaching profession as a square peg, but I never knew I was a square peg with regards to my philosophies on children or education. I didn’t even know what my philosophy was, though when someone asks you at twenty-two what your philosophy of education is, you come up with pretty textbook verbiage to help you sound good, but it isn’t real. It couldn’t be. How do you know? A better question might be, “What is your truth and knowledge, right now?”

We don’t know anything, until we experience life. Until we teach. Until we engage with others. Until we enter a system. Until we have a family. Until we are forced to examine our successes and pitfalls and then analyze why we rose or fell at any given time. Then what? We redefine, bask in those self-discoveries, and then become who we were always meant to be.

My advice is get to know yourself. The you that is you will be someone different next year and the year after, and this is a great thing because ultimately, everyone’s goal should be to discover who they really are and relish in the ever-changing reality, and celebrate when new self-discoveries are made. It may come with consequence with respects to your personal and professional lives, and your trajectory. But before we can embrace the world and those around it in full, we have to have an appreciation that we, as individuals, matter, as much as our individual journey’s matter, perhaps more than the journey we have with others.

Don’t disregard change, embrace it, for it is the new you!

I decided to explore my thirty year career in today’s entry. Mostly because I want there to be some context when I write about education, children, business, capitalism, parents, and every other topic I have experience with resulting from my professional journey.

I started teaching in 1997. To give you some perspective…it was the year that the movie Titanic graced the big screen. While Jack was courting Rose (up until the point he froze to death in the Atlantic) I was in my initial year of classroom teaching, getting my butt kicked by a bunch urban fourth graders. Titanic actually ended up being an ironic metaphor for the type of year I expected, verse the type of year it ended up being. Yet, all these years later I can look back and have an adult perspective on the situation and realize it was a valuable experience in my life for so many reasons. As not only did it give me a chance to learn about myself as a teacher, but the experience also gave me my first glimpse at a grossly flawed educational system at a local and state level, and an interesting look at how social politics in a place of employment outweighs everything else, including the education of children.

I taught eleven more years at the elementary level…every grade from first grade all the way up to eighth grade math. Private, public, rural, urban, and suburban. I also taught adult education classes at night where wannabe nurses would come back to master basic algebra in order to qualify for the nursing program. Though children are my stronger suit, the adults were pretty fun as well.

After fully realizing that our educational system is akin to kid prison, and that the most enlightened teachers in the field are isolated and ostracized for striving to rise above mediocrity, I left and started my own business, TSL Adventures, which, fourteen years later still thrives with multiple daycares, school-age programs, and summer camps throughout capital region New York.

Of course, there are a billion and one stories to be told along with much commentary about the experiences I have had, and you can sure bet I’ll be telling each one in random order in upcoming entries because as much as my experiences with various bureaucracies, co-workers, and traditionalism have only half-impressed me over the years, one thing that has always impressed me was the nature of children and child development. I have always put this at the forefront of all my endeavors and have met thousands of amazing kids over the years through business, teaching, and other means. So, to find something to be consistently amazed by year after year has been a great pleasure…like writing stories!

So when you see upcoming entries in the areas of all things children, education, childcare, families and business you will have some perspective as to where all of my wisdom and knowledge in these areas stems from.

For now, go watch Titanic and think of me teaching about cells by having children make cell cakes (yeah) just as the boat hits the iceberg. (The cakes did taste good, especially the candy nucleus).

As I sat at a restaurant on my own recently, quietly observing the crowd I lost myself in reflective thought. My mind is always racing and my need to keep moving is a base compulsion. Whether in business, writing, conversation, or daily routines, it is an endless feeling of the need to accomplish what I’m doing, and getting on to the next thing. To that end, I only give a specific activity in a given day, a certain amount of time to come full circle before moving on to the next thing.

Some may not enjoy that compulsive feeling to keep moving, but I actually love it because “keeping it moving” doesn’t always mean being on-the-job. I love to slow it down, wake up later in the morning, chill with a cup of coffee, read, enjoy the full moon and the pulsating ocean. When I’m doing these types of things, I’m doing something that helps me reach a goal, even if it is the goal of enjoying the simple pleasures of life. But I won’t sit there all day staring at the stars or making pictures out of the clouds. There is more to do!

That brings us back to the restaurant. Once I paused in my reflections I realized it had been ten minutes and nobody had come to me with a menu, some water, or even an acknowledgement that I was present. That is not all time wasted because reflection is a useful expenditure of time. Yet, I like to micromanage my own time and not let someone or something else do that for me, to the extent possible. Why give up more control in our lives than necessary?

The resolution in this case was that I decided ten minutes was enough time to wait for service, and so I got up quietly and left. Nobody even noticed. This is not the first time I have done this, nor will it be the last. With so many options for dining, why wait longer than you want to wait? We have perfect control in these situations. As such and where possible, I don’t typically wait. I don’t wait in long lines at Starbucks. My mind swirls with wonder when I see someone choosing to wait in an obvious 20-minute line for coffee. I don’t wait at restaurants if servers don’t wait on you in a reasonable amount of time. I don’t wait in grocery lines, opting for self-checkout, even when I have thirty things. I don’t wait in lines of traffic when there is an alternative route that is moving more quickly, even if it means it will take longer to get where I want to go. I don’t work on anyone else’s schedule. I try to shop and get banking, business, DMV, and all other needs done on the computer to avoid travel, lines, and added wasted time. The average person sleeps 25 years of his life, so as a species, we should not consider spending any more time on things that can be done more quickly somewhere or someway else. Or as James Bond once put it, “there is plenty of time to sleep when you’re dead.”

Is this impatience? Perhaps. But what is wrong with not being patient if it is quietly (or with noise when I’m on my own venting behind a slow driver) conveyed and does not lead to harm? How patient do we want to be anyway? What does a patient person look like and why are they so patient? You don’t have to be. Take control. Leave, avoid, and look for alternative solutions to save more time.

Keep it moving! The time you save, may be your own.

Anyway, I worked for a sub shop company for 6 years of my life. I was aged 16-22. I got fired twice because I was a punk kid who knew everything and I used to jump in the trash, but they loved me so always rehired me. In spite of my transgressions, I was a hard worker. No matter what I was doing, whether it was playing an instrument, running a race, sweeping up trash, or making a sub…I wanted to do it right and excel. (Oddly, this initiative never translated to desiring a 4.0 student ranking in college. That’s another analysis to look forward to) But making a sub! Now that’s fun.

Anyway, while working for the sub shop I was trained in the delicate art of sub-making. A slice of the bread. A spread of lettuce, four tomatoes, a spread of onions, a pre-determined number of meat slices or tuna balls, a pre-determined number of cheese pieces (one strip for American, four provolone, two swiss…wow I still remember), the dressing, the final cut, and BAM! Wrap and load.

Anyway, for efficiency sake, making subs in record time correctly was important to me and the company. Why? Because if you ever waited in a McDonald’s drive thru line pretty much….anywhere…it’s easy to observe that the extra $10 an hour per employee doesn’t buy efficiency. Just more whining. That’s another blog entry too.

It must have been my early knack for offering efficiency in service that drove me to want to be the fastest sub maker in the company. As it turned out, the sub company hosted a huge event at the Marriott, and I qualified for the sub making races. Yahoo! I forget my qualifying time, but I was making a sub in under ten seconds.

First prize was $1000. Second prize was $500.. Third prize was…a golden coke bottle. What? Well, you can guess by the title where I placed, but there is a story for this.

You see, they provided brand new bread knives for the competition. So, on go, I picked up the shiny serrated knife and sliced not only the top of the bread off, but my finger as well, leaving a gash that I temporarily ignored because I was too busy trying to win the race. And guess what…with blood spatter all over the sub and cutting board, I won the first round! Don’t worry, nobody ate the tainted sub.

Anyway, I knew I had to compete in the semi-finalist round so I bandaged up my finger and shoved my extra-long, puffy digit into the glove, and pressed on. Unfortunately, with the bandage hinderance, I was not able to secure my place in the finals. Yet, I did win third place in the company, which earned me the honors of a golden coke bottle along with a couple of stitches.

I still have that coke bottle today (along with a scar on my finger). The bottle and battle scar serve as a reminder that we must never give up. In spite of the blood, sweat, and tears. We must always press on.

*featured picture is not MY coke bottle. I’m abroad so had to act quickly to bind a substitute picture.