Category life lessons

I ventured down to New York City today from upstate today. This is a typical fall trip and first off, it was amazing being free from the vices of covid while in the city. Last time I went we had to show proof of vaccination to get in anywhere and a year later it was like covid never existed.

My thoughts quickly turned from covid to the merchandise hustlers as we traversed the streets and park. I don’t know if “hustler” is the right term, but I’m not sure how else to refer to these multitude of people that independently offer jewelry, compact discs of their latest recordings, prayer cards, and a host of other DIY merchandise to unsuspecting tourists. I say “offer” because they aren’t “selling” this merchandise, per-say. They are sticking merchandise into your stomach as you pass by, leaving you little choice but to grab it, then forcing you to pay for it, the whole time smiling and pretending you are friends.

I have found this practice to be quite common no matter where I seem to be in the world. In Costa Rica it was jewelry and massages. (Yes, they come up to you while you are relaxing on the beach and try to get you to come under the shade of a tree beyond the sands to have a massage). In Greece it was flowers. In Italy it was homemade jewelry that looked to have a one-week shelf life. In Paris you have to deal with the gypsies. In New Orleans I was actually blocked from moving as one of these people knelt down in front of me and shined my five-year old pair of sneakers for thirty seconds while I stood helpless to move. Then after when I placed five dollars in his outstretched hand, he cursed at me, and I honestly thought he was going to attack me as he demanded more money.

On another occasion my wife and I answered the call to have our children sketched by a street artist in NYC. Why not? The sign said $15. Not a bad deal. So we had the kids sit and waited while he sketched a beautiful portrait, then subsequently demanded $75. Of course, my wife fought him off and ultimately gave him half that amount, but it was yet another lesson learned.

The issue I have found isn’t necessarily that there are hustlers trying to make jewelry, shine shoes, sketch portraits, or sell their basement-made cd’s (Yes, cd’s still exist). The issue more often is that they offer a product or service with no price tag, but then often turn menacing if you don’t meet some unknown payment quota.

At the end of the day, the smartest move for a tourist to make when traveling the streets of any city is try not to look like a tourist, keep your hands in your pockets, look straight ahead as you explore, and if someone approaches you don’t indulge them. Don’t look them in the eyes, don’t smile, don’t talk to them, and keep it moving. They’ll move on to the next target soon after. Oh, and keep your wallet and phone in your front pockets, not your back pockets.

Finally, if someone blocks your path and starts shining your shoes, if those shoes are five years old, it’s probably best to slip out of them during the shine and run as fast as you can barefooted to get away.

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!

Here we are, almost fifteen years after establishing a business that we had no idea had so much potential. My college friends and I wanted to start a summer camp of our own to keep us busy while not teaching in the summer months. One opportunity led to another and I, personally, was suddenly at a crossroads. Leave teaching or pursue my own business endeavors? Be a cog in a system designed by others, or build my own machine? The latter choice won out.

I knew after leaving teaching that the childcare business had to be more than a single summer camp and an after school program. Little did I know, it probably didn’t need to be. But any rate, because of my hyperactive style of engagement and need to keep pushing boundaries as CEO, one location became two, then three, then four….a decade and a half later we host four daycares, over a dozen after school locations partnered with churches, schools…eleven annual summer camp locations. We have even expanded beyond the local county borders. Great, right? Be careful what you wish for.

Here is the problem. I am guessing it is a problem all businesses that continually expand have to rise above. Controlling the quality of the product while growing. Is it even possible? I haven’t figured it out yet.

We offer a service, so being able to grow while also being able to maintain the quality of the product has been a huge problem because there are so many factors. Most of them have to do with charging others to implement your product because let’s face it, nobody cares as much as the owners about the product. Especially in the childcare industry, where many of the jobs are only stepping stones, or a convenient way for people to fill gaps in their employment record.

So what do you do? Grow? Not grow? If you can ensure quality with a few sites, should you simply keep it minimalistic or try to figure out the puzzle of growing while being able to guarantee product quality?

Franchise businesses may not have to worry so much, as they sell their brand to others and collect a percentage of the profit for each franchise, regardless if their brand is represented well or not with the individual franchise. So, I guess in this case as long as the money flows…who cares.

But, that is not the way a private business with a real mission operates. It’s not just about the money, but about the reputation. What are we selling and is the product of the same quality everywhere we offer those services? If not, how do we reconcile this?

The awful truth is, maybe if you are an individual with a dream, you start small, stay small. Control the product by offering it personally and call it a day!

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.