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Celebration time

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For each of us, throughout our lives, there can be moments when we decide to take action and display our pleasure by engaging in enjoyable, typically social, activity.

For me, today I am celebrating a couple of weeks of technical activity cleaning up my home network, improving security, cleansing data and implementing a number of new features.

Updated Kerrzone Website

I mark the celebration of this milestone with a launch of an updated website for Kerrzone.com.  You will notice I have greatly simplified the interface and changed the content focus.

The work on my home technology continues with more enhancements planned for the future including adding SSL certificates for the websites, however,  modernizing kerrzone.com has been a goal of mine for awhile, so time to celebrate.

Hacking versus Managed Development

As I have engaged on my journey of technological improvement of my fairly extensive home technology I have really noticed the difference between development approaches.

In the workplace my experience had always included a high level of structured methodology while I would characterize my home development as more like hacking.

Methodology based technology starts with documented practices intended to be followed like recipes with check and balances to ensure that is the case.

Conversely my hacking journey begins with figuring it out (based on an underlying technical aptitude). In this case reference to documentation is only a last resort and even then a bit haphazard.

This of course is the higher risk approach but somehow I do seem to manage to figure it out in the end although some frustration might ensue while doing so.

Anyway, I reached one of my goals, so today I celebrate.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

The Seasons Spirit

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With the global pandemic affecting public health in all corners of the globe, I wondered if the holiday season spirit would still thrive as we approach the many significant widely recognized celebrations that occur this time of the year (e.g., Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa).

In many locales social gatherings are banned or severally restricted this includes restrictions on many traditional festive gatherings both religious and otherwise.

Human Spirit Prevails

It appears the strength of the human spirit is able to overcome adversity.   My observation is that everyone’s practices are taking different forms  to account for public health needs but the spirit of the season is still very apparent.

In a time when joy, peace and happiness are badly needed, we are  arising to the occasion.    Gift giving traditions and social interactions, meals and parties are muted and restrained but the spirit of joyous celebration is breaking through.

Once a year around the globe humans celebrate their own humanity and that of others.  This is a designated time (just after the winter or summer solstice depending on which hemisphere you reside) when we all get together, raise our tolerance levels and unite as one.

Humanity Prevails

The benevolence at the root of humanness is not always apparent and times of stress don’t usually bring out the best of us.  It appears the overriding sentiments of this traditional festive season overcome the extreme challenges of our current circumstances.

For me this is just evidence that at the heart of each human is a base of decency, love of others and desire for everyone to be joyous.  This designated time of year is a terrific opportunity for us to take advantage of and pandemic or not we will.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Celebrate, dance to the music

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Celebration contributes to our ongoing joy, it behooves us to find a purpose for marking our pleasure at an important event or occasion or just by engaging in enjoyable, typically social, activity, every day.

Holidays are designated days of ceremony, on and off as both individuals and  social groups we select significant events and milestones to celebrate but these celebrations are selective and not continuous.

Life is Short

In the context of the Universe and time as we know it our own lives are just a drop in pond.  From that perspective celebrating everything continuously only makes sense.

While the following is a trite and a well worn phrase, our life is a celebration in and of itself we should not waste any moment under a cloud of fear, anxiety or other stressful feelings.

However small or large, beautiful or ugly scary or relaxing everything we experience is ours to enjoy and celebrate.  Logically why would we choose otherwise.

Choose Pleasure

One of the greatness opportunities of life is a feeling of happy satisfaction and enjoyment.  Why entertain anything but the joy we derive from pleasure.

We can find distinctive pleasure in everything.  An open and optimistic perspective is all you need to do this.  How you perceive your personal interactions and the things around you is core to achieving personal enjoyment.

Simply put, choose pleasure every-time, what possible reasons can there be not to.  It is only logical.

Pass it On

Another significant reason to find pleasure and celebrate everything  around you at all time is the fact it is infectious.  Your celebration will very quickly be joined by others.

Spread the joy.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Presents or Presence

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This is a time of year for celebration.  Cleverly labeled, we call this the holiday season.  It is a time of getting together with family and friends enjoying good food and other libations and for many, giving and receiving gifts.

Whether associated with a religious celebration (e.g., Christmas, Hanukkah) or just a milestone (e.g., New Year’s day) the spirit of giving (and getting) is prominent.

Aging Population

As the baby boomers grow old their need for material thing’s lessens.   Often their real desire is to share new experiences and memories with their friends and family.

For empty nesters,(i.e.,  co-habitant adults whose progeny have left their childhood home) the real gift is simply the presence of their loved ones. To play on words, presence not presents.

The Joy of Giving

While I do not have empirical evidence, my observation over time coupled with personal experience is giving a gift is more fullfilling than receiving.

Don’t get me wrong I do enjoy it when I am given something.  More than the thing being given though is just the good feeling I get knowing that someone cares about me enough to displays it with a present.

On the other hand the personal feeling of joy and pleasure that spreads through my entire being when I gift someone else is huge.   Giving makes me feel good and my observations of others is this behaviour is not just isolated to me.

Remember though, the gift does not need to be tangible, just a hug or a handshake can often be more than enough.  Of course, you need to be there to do that.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Is it real?

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Halloween reminds me that things are not always as they seem.  This is a tenet of magicians, a key practice on April fools day and of course a halloween concept.

Dressing up as something you are not is a fantasy, it is not real.  A lot of people find it fun and enjoy the practice.  For me it has always been a bit of a chore.

It’s the Spirit

Unlike the common Halloween practices, i.e., wearing a costume, going door to door for treats or attending parties to display your proficiency at disguise, what I like about Halloween is the festive spirit.

Even if the concept of focusing on  scary, spooky and frightening activities does not appeal to me, the idea of celebrating some exaggerated aspect of life as a societal group has merit.

Holidays are intended to be a chance to behave outside of the norm, although still within the limits of legal and repectful behaviour.

It is this opportunity for innovation, surprise and fleeting change that make the practice fun.  

Taken logically, dressing  as something you are not, playing with exploding toys (firecrackers) and giving gifts (usually candy) to strangers are outside regular behaviour.

The holiday lets us (as a group) accept, embrace and enjoy these unusual practices, largely because we know, it is just for the moment.  

And then, back to the safe and mundane.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Celebrating Failure

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Seems odd to celebrate failure, in fact there is a lot of strong rationale for this practice.

What is failure

There can be a few nuances to the definition of failure, for the purpose of this discussion let’s view it as not achieving the desired or intended objective.

Success is basically the opposite, that is achieving the desired or intended objective.

Both success and failure have an associated order of magnitude.  Sometimes they can be very close.

For example, the objective could be to make revenue of $100,000 in a given month.  If the actual revenue is $98,000 the goal was not achieved (failure) while revenue of $102,000 exceeded the goal (success).  In the overall scheme of things there is not much difference in this performance.

Failure does not sound good, why celebrate?

Although Yoda (a deeply philosophical character from the Star Wars movies) states “there is no try, do or do not”; and it sounds good, the reality is if you don’t try you are almost assured neither do nor do not states will be achieved.

Celebrating failure has an interesting ring to it and usually get’s peoples attention when I talk about it.  The intent is to recognize the attempt.  Recognition has been demonstrated in numerous physiological tests to be an effective motivator, a way to encourage repetition of a behavior.  Celebrating failure is just a form of recognition (read on …..)

Setting a stretch goal, should result in failure more often than not – I would argue it’s hard to classify as a stretch goal if you can always attain it.   So we should all fail on occasion.

Acknowledging, recognizing, even encouraging the behavior that led to the failure provides reinforcement of the effort.  Although it’s a simplistic statement, consider; “if you did not make the attempt it’s unlikely you will achieve the desired result”.

Motivate through recognition

In a leadership role I often hosted team sessions to review and discuss results, both bad and good (i.e., success and failure) to encourage a continued drive toward achievement.  To be clear, these were never about criticism or what went wrong, but as Mary Poppins sang – “accentuate the positive”.

The results spoke for themselves.  Instead of failing which can demotivate and result in a downward spiral (losing teams continue to lose) concentrating on the positive aspects stopped the downward slide (it’s not bad, it’s really good and here is why).