Neither of these are worth an individual post or commentary, but...

SMALL MILESTONE #1: I RAN 20km TODAY.

SMALL MILESTONE #2: I HAVE OFFICIALLY RECEIVED MY M.Ed CREDENTIALS.

I just wish I had something musical to announce. But I don't. So meh.

I'd heard of the Dunning-Kruger Effect before, but this episode of This American Life hit a little too close to home a couple times.

Here's the episode:

To make this entry easier, I'm going to use the official transcript from the episode:

Here's the main section that hit me:

Now, I don't tend to think I've done well at anything. I think I'm a terribly incompetent guitarist and I hear faults in my singing voice practically every time I open my mouth; despite plenty of people's assurances, I didn't think I was going to finish my Master's project at all, let alone on time; as far as being a husband and father, I think I'm frighteningly negligent and unempathic; I don't market my blog, my photography, or any of my creative endeavours because I think they're worthless and nobody wants to hear me; I don't think I'm adapting to the newer models of teaching very well.

Simultaneously, I wouldn't've started the Master's program if I hadn't looked at different administrators in Smithers and thought "I can do that;" I had somebody send me a facebook message recently that basically suggested that he could understand the things I'd written here at this blog, which is a little bit of evidence that my writing is comparatively cogent to strangers; I know people enjoy my music when I show it to them; most people assure me that I'm an adequate father and husband. So no matter how much I beat myself up, most of the evidence reveals that I'm a comparatively well-adjusted person. This was what was so heartbreaking about October-December of this year: I was faced with accusations that simply didn't line up and I had no idea how to deal with them. But as I climb out of that mess, I see that I shouldn't've doubted myself in the first place, that I catered to those accusations and it ripped me apart because they just didn't make sense. 

​The Dunning-Kruger connection is this: I just got myself a degree in Leadership Studies and I'm totally frightened to do anything with it. I don't want to boldy go into leadership-like positions because I am afraid  not of failure, but of people not telling me when I fail. I don't want to be a leader who thinks everything is going OK, and nobody has the guts to tell me that I'm incompetent. I don't want to be a Dunning-Kruger victim, even though we all fall into that camp now and then.

But I need to step forward into something. I can't afford to keep putting these ideas off. I will need to start applying for more intensive teaching positions over the coming years, but I'm frightened to do it. I've never been a leader at anything. I've rarely volunteered and never stood at the end of a board in order to arrange something. I can't think of anything I've ever influenced anybody to do. I've got myself a degree in something in which I have no experience, so I will have no idea as to when I'm being incompetent. 

Now, since I don't really have a huge ego about anything, perhaps I'm less likely to fall into the Dunning-Kruger camp. Perhaps I will never delude myself into thinking I'm competent at anything. But it's still a little frightening, nonetheless. 

Because I can handle being incompetent, but I really want to know if I am.

I just read this story to my daughters. It was so ridiculous that I decided to make a video about it.

It's strange because the Squids Will Be Squids rendition of the tale isn't much more crazy.

There is no way that I could have ever imagined that I'd be in this place even a year ago. My life is practically unrecognizable to myself. From the outside, I think things look pretty-much the same, but on the inside the changes have been enormous and unprecedented. I'd like to keep most of those changes "on the inside," but I'd also like to share some of them a little. Just a little bit.

Here are the main "lessons" or things I've had to come to terms with this year, at least that I can think of tonight:

1. TRAUMA MATTERS: There is no way to completely escape, to completely let go of trauma. If somebody has experienced trauma in their childhoods, no amount of reason can fully eradicate it. Sidestepping long-running trauma, like there's some masterful behavioral or cognitive jiu-jitsu that can move around it, simply doesn't work. It needs to be dealt with carefully and competently, and the more intimate you are with traumatized people, the more likely that it will rear its head. And in those cases, when that trauma comes out swinging, it's destructive and hurtful—and not about you.
2. YOU CAN'T MAKE ANYBODY FEEL ANYTHING AND VICE VERSA: For years I've felt responsible for others' emotions. This year, through my readings and therapies, I think I've finally come to a place where I'm not taking responsibility for people's emotions anymore. I will take responsibility for how I treat people and try to treat them with the respect they deserve, but I will no longer beat myself up for how people think and feel about me. This goes the other way, too. I am working to take phrases like "You made me feel" or "You forced me to" out of my vocabulary in order to reteach myself my own relative agency. I still need to deal carefully with my years of misplaced responsibility, but this is a step forward.
3. ALTHOUGH PEOPLE'S JUDGMENTS OF MY CHARACTER MAY BE FOUNDED IN A TRUTH, I HAVE THE RIGHT TO NOT IDENTIFY WITH THOSE JUDGMENTS: Despite my overall skepticism, I trust people too much (My okCupid profile said as much). When somebody calls me a name or attributes a characteristic to me, when they say "You're like this," or "You're a ____," I tend to toss the idea around. Even if their comment seems utterly unfounded or hurtful, I tend to think "There must be some sort of truth in that. What might it be?" Although this is all OK, at this point I think I need to admit that I've overdone it, that I've accepted labels too readily, that I've treated baseless ideas as legitimate. I'd like to think I'm learning to sift out the bad ones, the faulty labels and misattributions; I'm doing my best to replace them with "Needs" and "Feelings," as identified in Nonviolent Communication. Just because someone says I'm an asshole doesn't mean I need to accept it; that accusation could very well be about them, or merely a projection.
4. NOT EVERYBODY SEES THE WORLD LIKE I DO: As a trusting, semi-rational intellectual, I have no high ground in my perception of the world. Although I'd like to think I've always been aware of how my mind plays tricks on me and I've always had a healthy skepticism of my own perceptions, I think I'm learning more and more about how emotions can create a very different angle on the world. Emotional thinkers see things differently than I do, and I think I'm coming to better terms with that fact. Unfortunately, this also means that I'm learning how my rationalism has backed me into corners with some emotional people, and how I've condescended to them in a typically intellectual manner.
5. ALTHOUGH CIRCUMSTANCES IN RELATIONSHIP STRUGGLES MAY BE UNIQUE AND UNPRECEDENTED, THE GENERAL PATTERNS OF DYSFUNCTION ARE COMMON AND ADDRESSABLE: As I've been reading more self-help and mass-market psychology literature, and even my reading of a clinical book about trauma, I've started to see my own dysfunctions and "crazy" on full display in print. This is humbling because I didn't expect to be so average. Nonetheless, the circumstances I've found myself in are certainly unique and I can't find a book that addresses them specifically because no book would consider certain elements of my current situation reasonable or even sane. But the patterns are there, and if I put my English degree twist-anything-to-connect-to-anything skills to work, I might be able to get out of all this with a healthy level of resilience and even grit.

My wife flew to Hawaii for the coming three and a half weeks. She's hoping to deal with some of her stuff there and come back refreshed with a slightly clearer perspective on things. I wish her the best.

Me, I'm here on my own with the girls, working through my own stuff my own ways: through competence and relationships at work, the maintenance of positive, empathic relationships with my daughters, through reading, and through creation of content of different sorts. I've set up the microphones at the computer and hope to track down some inspiration of things to talk about and create. Here's to hoping it works out a bit.

I enjoyed running back in high school. I enjoyed doing the long-distance runs and regularly came in 4th place in my PhysEd class for long-distance runs. I always took pride in this because it was the only thing in PhysEd that I did well.

Recently, I've started running again. I've started trying to run at least 10 kms twice a week, and to push myself hard on the weekends. This is my plan to get back into running and enjoy it, to get a little bit back in shape.

On Friday, I planned to do the following route:

I wound up doing that route, but it took a lot longer than the original map suggested. It was suppoosed to be 12 kms and it wound-up 16. And I didn't even come close to finishing the loop.

I take a lot of pride in this because it's the classic "get yourself out of a rut" advice: get outside and start running. And I'm actually doing it.

As I run, I enjoy the act of making choices: I choose to keep running to hear the next song, or to the next intersection, or to the next kilometre, or to the next round number on the clock. Between all these little checkpoints, I get a sense of agency in the act of running. It feels good.

As long as I stay away from running injuries.