2016
Not a bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon… Reading books to this one in the hammock with Boo…
*Fish and Dolphins land-bound (August 2015, Yu Garden, Shanghai, China)*
Our adventure wasn’t all boring as we found a new park and bakery 😀
The girls and had a little adventure this afternoon as we went on a long walk to pick up my Jeep from the shop
Watch The Spring - 10 years of charity: water
The Spring from charity: water on Vimeo.
Yesterday, charity: water published the video above as part of celebrating that the non-profit has been around for 10 years now helping to solve the water crisis for 10 years. That is an amazing accomplishment and this video takes you back to the beginning of how Scott Harrison started the company. In fact, it takes you a bit further back to how major dots in his life which probably and ultimately led him to create the company. Hearing his story again is always so powerful and moving and never gets old. The whole video itself is so powerful and moving and the message is very simple:
Clean water changes everything.
and the organization has a simple goal of ensuring:
No one on earth will die from dirty water.
###Why do I care about charity: water I have been a big fan of this organization for a while now and one of the main things that drew me to it was how transparent they were by investing/figuring out ways to give donors confidence in what they are doing. Some examples are showing a Google map of all the Completed Projects by using GPS or Building Remote Sensors in order to report on the water flowing at any of their projects, at any given time, anywhere in the world. Not to mention, the 100% model, this was such a radical change back when charity: water was started as it was the first of it’s kind to help promote confidence that a charity would not misuse the funds it has been given for project purposes by really requiring them to figure out another way to obtain funds for Administrative purposes (e.g., salaries, office space, computers). That idea was so powerful of a change that I have now seen it starting up at other non-profit organizations.
I can’t wait to see what happens with this organization in helping solve the water crisis in the next 10 years.
*Dark morning run on an overgrown trail (August 2016, Eden Prairie, MN)*
Had a great day at the Iowa State Fair
*Fluffy Clouds over a field of Corn (July 2015, Ollie, IA)*
Finding Your Tribe
I was listening to the Intentionally Wandering Podcast by Jeff Sandquist last week and it really struck a chord with me. The topic he was discussing was "How About Finding Your Tribe."
I am a frequent listener of the podcast and I have found that I almost exclusively listen to it when running in the morning as a way of reflecting. This episode specifically got me reflecting not only after listening to it but now as I am writing it a week later. I am guessing it was just the right timing as we and probably the message I needed to hear as we just had some good friends stay with us for an extended weekend. Then we went to Iowa for a short trip to visit family we don't see enough which then led into a very after a hectic week at work. Finally, probably the icing on the cake was that I realized it was the first week of August and some of my summer goals of connecting with friends and spending more time with family down in Iowa had not turned out as I had planned.
“Ultimately [finding your tribe] comes down to reaching out to people. … It comes down to putting yourself out there to find the people that you resonate with.” - Jeff Sandquist
The podcast, during that morning run, really made me reflect/challenge why my existing connections are still very important and reminded me that I still need to do a better job of staying connected to them. Also, it hit me that even though my life/work tends to get away from me, I still need to continue to create/cultivate new(er) connections with people that I resonate with.
This idea of “Finding your Tribe” fits nicely in a year of changes as I continue to reflect on how I want my life to look in the next year/decades to come. Even, more importantly, it is an underlying theme that guides who, what, and where I want to spend my free time.
There is a lot of other good resources that Jeff points you to with links on his page so I would suggest you go listen to the podcast and check out the other links and information he has. While you are at it, consider supporting this local (to me) Minnesota Podcaster by checking out his Pateron page.
Wordless Wednesday 08/10
*Olympic Spirit (August 2016 My own artwork for an upcoming Olympic Party)*
How to make work-life balance work
I stumbled upon this older TED talk (was recorded back in 2010) and felt it worth sharing. I think it is a topic is still very relevant today as most employers always talk about how they are giving employees great work-life balance. However, one point that Nigel Marsh points out is the following:
Certain job, and career choices are fundamentally incompatible with being meaningful engaged on a daily basis with a young family. - Nigel Marsh
Seeing how I have a young family at home I can relate how each employees definition of what Work-Life balance should be and should look like can differ drastically. As I have only worked at a couple companies through out my career, I know each has had their own version of work-life balance and I would say each had good and bad parts to it.
If you don’t design your life someone else WILL design it for you and you may not like their idea of balance. - Nigel Marsh
For me, I work for a company that is fairly flexible in my opinion. I won’t say everything is exactly how I would imagine my perfect day but they value family and that helps for where I am at in my life. I think for my personal situation it is trying to balance my own definition of how I want work/life to balance out on a daily, weekly, monthly basis given my situation, job, priorities. It is a constant balancing act between all of those points which is why there isn’t a one size fits all solution and you just need to make the most of it.
What is your definition of work-life balance?
Having a fun afternoon hanging out with my better half
Wordless Wednesday 08/03
*Lifting the Fog in the morning hours (August 2016, Lotus Lake, Eden Praire, MN)*
Neon Fever Dream by Eliot Peper
Neon Fever Dream by Eliot Peper (@EliotPeper) was a really good page turner that once I finally started I couldn’t put it down as I wanted to know what would happen next (I probably should have read about one month ago but kept putting it off until Monday night). This is another book of his that I can’t recommend enough as I have tried to read every one of Eliot’s books since he first published Uncommon Stock: Version 1.0 a couple years back.
In full disclosure, I was fortunate enough to receive an advance copy of the book a while back. However, at this exact time, you can’t read it yet but can Pre-Purchase it. In fact, even though I received the advanced copy I still decided to purchase it as well.
The story starts out by getting you acquainted with the characters over the first couple of chapters to give you a good backdrop of the main character so you get a sense of her background. Then everything is turned upside down in an instant with Asha and as a whim of trying to take control of her own life she ends up heading to Burning Man with her new best “friend”.
However, just when everything seemed to be getting on the right track, Asha realized she doesn’t know the people she is with as well as she thought and she needs to quickly figure out who to trust and who is telling the truth. Once sorted out is only the beginning as the bigger story of a criminal take down brings more twists and turns to the past of hers and the people she decided to trust. Each page will make you question if she is trusting the right people from her current situation or her people from her past from long ago. Will they still be able to take down the criminal empire? (Come on I can’t tell you the whole story here, check it out yourself, trust me it is worth it.)
Most of the story takes place at Burning Man, which I have never been to and not sure I ever will in my lifetime. However, with Eliot’s style of writing, I felt like I was there. With my little understanding of the event and layout, I really did feel like I was walking or biking around the playa visiting the various places. In fact, one specific part of the book detailed out the author’s thoughts on the event that shows you the amount of detail he added:
This was a city built and dismantled in a week—a collective piece of art as beautiful and fleeting as the mandala they had watched the monks create with such painstaking care. Calling it a festival was a slight. It was more than that. It was an experiment, an exploration of what it meant to be alive.
One of my favorite quotes of the book that kept on popping up (four times I think) was:
You cannot control the world, but only you control how you react to it.
Finally, if you are a fan of Eliot's other writing you might find the "easter egg" in the book where a past character might have made an appearance. I wish I could say I would have realized it all on my own but prior to reading the book I had read the book review by Brad Feld (@bfeld) and already knew it was coming so was on the look out of for it.
Update: If you are looking for some details on what inspired the author to write this book check out his post title A dark secret hides in the swirling dust and exultant revelry of Burning Man, where he talks about it. I always think it is interesting to hear how/why an author wrote a particular book.
Wordless Wednesday 07/27
*Powerful Minnehaha Falls slowly/continuously cutting through the limestone (July 2016, Minnehaha Park, Minneapolis, MN)*
