A few recent reflections from my social media sites.
From Twitter
As I'm working through Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication.
I posted both of the following videos under the same tweet because I thought the first one didn't upload. However, it did, and I think both of them work well together.
From Tumblr
And a display in Abbotsford got me thinking about abortion yesterday.
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About six or so years ago, my daughter, 4 years old, came home from Sunday school and proudly exclaimed, "Did you know that God made the world in six days?" My wife and I looked at each other and immediately realized that we had allowed our daughter to be propagandized. This was a pivotal moment in my faith (I only speak for myself), since it forced me to come to terms with the fact that I did not want my daughter learning the themes of the very faith I espoused. I thought, If I really believe this stuff and really identify as a Christian, why do I balk at my daughter learning what I hold as true? It was a tough pill to swallow. It also drew my attention to the haphazard nature of Sunday School and religious education. When she came home with that information, I had an odd epiphany of professionalism: if I, as a teacher, have to jump through hoops to maintain my professional status as an educator, why was I leaving my child in the charge of a non-professional? What standard do they work by? I realized that Sunday school teachers have no standardized level of professionalism. I haven't sent my daughter to Sunday school since then. Which is easy because I haven't attended church since 2011. What I'm trying to get at is this: professionalism matters to me. I appreciate the need for professional standards and codes of ethics in all professions. I appreciate the need for governing bodies to oversee professional workers. And I trust that standardized, well-governed workers should have some level of expertise that I can rely on for one thing or another. Professionalism, however, is expensive. And the Internet is not. And god, I'd love to think I'm literate enough to save a few bucks on therapy now and then by searching symptoms online. Steven Novella at NeuroLogica suggests that I'm trying out the Google University Effect, which feeds confirmation bias. Novella writes,
However, I can't afford much in the way of psychotherapists right now. So I brave the Internet and hope not to feed my confirmation bias. I can look up things about my depression and hope not to feed it!
Here's to unprofessionalism!
Over the last couple months, I haven't written much about music. I haven't had much time to think about music and even the band practices have waned in my busyness and lack of clearheadedness. I am not "thinking music" right now; between work, my schooling, my children, my partner, and various other relationships, I have little to no room to get passionate about music.
But I have written a couple times about my first wading steps into Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication. So here are some of the resources I've been using. I first read about Nonviolent Communication when I first read More Than Two: A practical guide to ethical polyamory two summers ago. (Embedded below is the summary of NVC as described by Franklin Veaux and Eve Rickert).
To be honest, however, I didn't take it to heart two summers ago because I thought I was a good enough communicator. I mean, as a teacher I have to be a good communicator, amiright?
Apparently I'd self-deceived myself, however; when I have three different people in a three-month window send me to the same resource, you think I'd get the hint. So I'm doing my best to take the hint—despite my continuing busyness. And as my fits of anxiety around communicating my needs and desires have grown more frequent and humiliating, I think it worthwhile to do some deliberate self-help. As I posted last week, about a month ago I started working through the following workshop (below):
I'm now about halfways through this audio course (below), which I listen to on my walks and when I'm alone in the car.
So far, I feel an affinity to the program for a rather English teacherish reason: I appreciate its focus on behaviour and discouragement of lazy "to be" verbs. This might be a step 1.
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April 2024
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