I have returned to secondary teaching for a fixed term gig at the same school my daughter attends. The library maker space work was getting pretty sad and we simply weren’t busy enough for it to stay interesting. I struggle with employment that doesn’t actively move forward and work towards being productive and useful. I simply don’t like being comfortable and static in my work so have moved on. It looks like I am still moving towards having a number of different avenues of work and income and I still enjoy working with a wide range of people.
Secondary teaching is really odd now. Schools have taken on a lot more than educating young people and the classrooms are incredibly complex places now. I’m not convinced it’s a good thing and I certainly find teaching more tiring than it used to be … although I may be getting older I guess. Still, they have a laser cutter and the 3D printer I bought way back when I worked in the previous version of the school so I am having fun getting things back up and running. I have found myself taking junior food technology classes which is new and I am constantly feeling like a beginning teacher again. Probably good for my general levels of hubris but it’s a hard call. Digital Tech and the workshop/makerspace work is excellent though.
Looking forward to a bit of a break soon and maybe an extended lie down at the end of the year.
It seems weird to be writing 2023 as a year. Sort of futuristic in a Buck Rogers kind of way.
Up in Auckland for punk concerts that were booked last August. Social Distortion, Bad Religion and Me First and The Gimme Gimmes. When I got the tickets my biggest concern was Covid shutting things down and I certainly hadn’t contemplated a cyclone flooding out the city. In the usual wonderful way the trip was able to continue with flights and shows all in action and so far the concerts have been amazing. I often think about NOFX’s Fat Mike talking about mole people with magnets under the ground controlling his direction and saving him from himself. I guess it’s what people call fate or luck or something but I really like the mole people image and some days it feels exactly like someone is pushing me in certain directions to keep everything safe and sound.
When you suffer from anxiety making decisions to do things like this can be disproportionately difficult. It’s weird to manage the head noise that goes with doing this sort of thing but the last few years have been about actively learning to manage this shit and get on with life as best as possible. Going to concerts, speaking to large groups, making big decisions are all easy for me. Catching an air plane, filling the car with petrol, finding a car/bike park are all ridiculously crippling. It’s like living a life that has everything flipped around and the physical reaction is not in line with the conscious mind. We all have our things to deal with I guess.
My daughter has moved into the next stage of education and is quickly heading towards being a teenager, levelling up as a person. I still find it difficult to drop her off at a school I used to work at, to be part of a system I no longer have much respect for but it is mixed with pride at her ability to take things as they come and find ways to fit into the system and still be herself.
I always find it interesting to look back over a year and, in particular, look at the sheer number of things that were done, accomplished, learned and survived. I have made a habit over the last decade or so of recording achievements on various social media and my web sites and it provides quite a solid record of things that happened. I made a conscious decision a while back to focus on positive outcomes to stave off some of the misery that tends to surround social media platforms these days. I simply try not to engage with the crazy and record things that I worked on that achieved a positive outcome or learning of some sort. The end result is that when I reflect back I see all of the good things that happened and life seems pretty good.
The library job has been, as expected, a great way to meet a wide range of people and find new opportunities within the community. From a lovely woman who is wonderfully obsessed with magpies and started a project to laser cut magpie silhouettes to a generous engineer who has put his old wood lathe in my workshop for “as long as I am interested”. I have worked with year 10 students to build arcade machines, helped get robotics established in a library, connected with tabletop miniature painters and modellers, and helped a number of schools get ignored 3d printers, laser cutters and screen printing tables back in action. It has been quite an action packed year in a lot of ways. I am now also happily learning to turn wood on the lathe and have upgraded my airbrush to try and learn new techniques without having to battle the brush so much. The workshop is looking positively excellent and I spend a lot of time out there now making things and trying out new ideas.
Next year my daughter starts a new school as a year 7 and all of the things that go with growing up. I’m exploring new opportunities with secondary education and remaining at the library (a second year in a workplace is a novelty for me these days). With any luck things stay stable for a little longer and new opportunities start to appear.
Looking back I realise I have been doodling on this web site for 20 years. I guess it ended up as a sort of weird journal exercise that has at times kept me sane but it is interesting to read back and reflect on how life has changed in some ways and not much in others.
Covid is still a thing and it’s getting pretty weird out there as people try their best to ignore things they don’t like. I get it but it’s tricky watching social systems like health and education bending under the pressure when we could all just ease off a bit. The ol’ “lets get back to normal” thing only really works with people who liked the old normal. It reminds me of the Xander Cage quote from xXx:
“Before you ask someone to save the world, you’d better make sure they like it the way it is.”
The last guinea pig died a few weeks back leaving us with some fish and a somewhat psychotic cat who hates everyone but C. He regularly just hisses at me. I miss the guinea pig. I think we’re leaving off any new pets for a while and see how this year pans out.
The library job is plugging along. School holidays are a bit weird and I’m still not a fan of primary education but I’ve got a few secondary schools to work with next term and the community education in the maker space is still good fun. In between I get to play with the tools and try out project ideas as they come up.
Settling in to the new role as a Learning Specialist in the libraries has been a bit of a mission for the last month. Great people and a lot of potential to build up some great programmes around community learning but … wow … this Covid thing is really making life complicated. The amount of work required just to leave the house and work with people is adding to the pile of white noise currently barrelling through my tiny little mind. Still deciding whether this is a great way to start a new role or whether I’m simply doing things the hard way again. Life. It also turns out I still suck a bit at isolation and avoiding people and am beginning to think I might not be an introverted person. I have a sneaky suspicion I’m actually a slightly quiet extrovert. Not that it really matters much in the grand scheme bit trying to figure out what makes you tick is always interesting.
I am enjoying the moments where I do get to work with people and am starting to find areas I can build up with people of like mind. As always it’s going to be interesting where it all goes.
I have decided to move on from secondary teaching to take up a role as a education specialist in the library makerspaces. A bit of a change in some ways but I like that it retains a strong community education focus and the libraries have really upped their game in terms of tools and ideas around education. I had to admit to myself that I was really not enjoying being back in a secondary school and that, while the classroom teaching had enjoyable moments, the original vision the school had had is fast being dragged down to the usual level of mediocrity seen at the secondary level. After finding myself having the same discussions/arguments about timetables, assessment and teaching practice I discovered that after 10 years of teaching across a range of schools my enthusiasm for building up courses has some limits. My focus now is to try and find work with flexibility and variety while minimising contact with people who talk and fluff around a lot while doing very little in the way of outcomes. I am also looking forward to a lighter commute and the opportunity to get back on my bike.
The Making It brand is once again selling well this Christmas. The online model has worked well for us and there has been a regular little stream of sales throughout the year. It has become quite a sustainable little hobby income for us and it’s nice to see people still enjoying the products.
Another week before the end of year break and then on to new things … again.
The country is back in a Covid-19 lock down so we’ve had a couple of weeks at home. My silver lining is that I’m being paid this time around. I ran out of creative enthusiasm after about a week and have been idling ever since working on small projects, providing students with feedback when they ask, and generally trying not to create too much make-work to make myself feel useful. Technically the courses I run operate quite well remotely and the keen students are well into it. Working in front of a computer full time again is really not doing it for me any more so at least I now know my interest in working in I.T. again is at full ebb.
A lot of small experiments and little projects to get some instant wins are the focus at the moment. Exploring short project ideas that introduce skills and tools quickly in moderately interesting contexts is allowing me to provide a wider range of students with learning opportunities. These small projects are also helping me stay sane as the larger more ambitious projects tend to take more brain power … something I seem to be in short supply of at the moment.
A couple of new opportunities have appeared on my radar this year. New directions and possible new work environments as I try to pull my working life back to something more local and more related to my interests. I have not enjoyed the year back in secondary teaching as I had hoped and in general the heavy administration load is taking away the excitement I usually find in the classroom. While that is a bit sad I guess things are always changing and as my interests and skills have changed it might be time for more reflection and a bit of a reset.
One of our little guinea pigs died last week. Jojo, the more active one seemed to just run out of steam. The other one seems to be quite happy on his own but I keep forgetting how much pets become part of our lives.
A new year and a new position in a school again. I am giving it another go at Rolleston College and seeing whether I still have any teaching mojo left. It’s a much longer commute than previous roles and the school is going through some pretty hefty growing pains but it is generally nice to be working with young people again. On a positive note I now have a lot of time to listen to podcasts while travelling so am working through a mix of education and punk focused discussions. I am definitely in survival mode as I come up to speed and create four new courses so things are up and down a bit but I have hopes that it will go well.
Over January we travelled around Otago and Southland to visit places from my childhood. Both C and I spent our teenage years in Ōtepoti (Dunedin) so we spent a few days there before heading down through the Catlins towards Waihōpai (Invercargill). A visit to my old primary school (no longer a school) and some old haunts before heading off to Aparima (Riverton) and Tuatapere on our way to Te Anau. I was born in Tuatapere and it was great to finally see it as an adult. The Waiau river runs right through the middle of the place and we were able to follow it up as we travelled. Love that river. I was surprised how connected I felt to the Southland region and how familiar and comfortable it felt. A great trip and we are looking forward to planning more trips around Aotearoa as there are so many places we have never seen here.
Another interesting year appears to be in progress.
This year was a chance to take a break and do some things for myself, find some balance again and have a fresh look at the things I want to do next in life. My plan was to get out talking to people, try new things and not get too anxious about money or getting sucked into roles I no longer have an interest in. ‘Life’ had other plans and while I have mostly managed to continue exploring new things and talk to people it is fair to say progress has been different from my original expectations.
This year I have put my focus on people and productive work rather than roles and jobs. It has been interesting exploring where I see value and how that often does not match with social expectations. It has been a year of learning new technical skills and coming to grips with my own value. In particular the mental struggle with moving from primary income to primary caregiver. Some days it has been an effort to find something productive to do and/or realign the value I assign to things. Other days it has been simple and everything feels fine. The good days seem to correspond to talking to people. I find that interesting.
The impact of a global virus has had a personal effect on the year and certainly impacted the way I meet and talk to people. I found it particularly interesting to watch the response of the country to a perceived threat to ‘jobs’ and full time employment and noted the high value we, as a nation, place on them. I have essentially been low income and regularly unemployed this year. By choice I might add. I never expected financial or emotional support from anyone outside my family and we planned for this year (global viruses aside). I was subsequently not part of the financial support packages or, I feel, the media driven view of Aotearoa and the ‘team of 5 million’ crap that was being bandied around. I know I’m not alone and it comes as no surprise that this has all put pressure on existing social issues and the individualist approach we have cultivated as a nation over the last fifty years or so.
It is great that as a nation we were able to reduce the impact of the virus despite repeated whinging from old white men and people who are so ensconced in their ‘job’ that any threat to that and their individual circumstances requires national action. It has been great to be able to spend time with my daughter and with myself looking at the different ways that life can be lived. I am lucky that I have been able to plan for a year like this one and have time to follow this sort of personal exploration. I know now that I’m not interested in re-engaging with the job focused lifestyle I used over the last 20 years and have no idea what happens next year. I do know that I have had to refocus a lot of my own preconceptions and social values and in some cases change my attitude completely. It’s been personal and challenging and I am yet to decide if this year has been a nightmare or one of the best things to ever happen to me.
So here we are. Eight odd weeks of national lock down to minimise the effects of Covid-19. I’d like to say my life was affected in some way but in general I stayed home, worked on the house and spent time with my daughter who was around a lot more what with the schools being closed. Life sort of carried on. It helps to generally be away from jobs. A bit of work to do but none of it required being around other people. I am rather selfishly happy that I am not in a secondary school at the moment. I recently read “NOFX: The Hepatitis Bathtub and Other Stories” in which Fat Mike talked about mole people controlling his life direction keeping him out of trouble. I found this somewhat familiar. Earthquakes, lock downs and viruses and I have not been in a school for any of them. It’s hard not to think about mole controllers. I may be going insane.
The house is almost painted. As of today there are two more windows to do and I am done. Lots of interesting experiments with the laser cutter and a first look at using leather after a friend asked about 3D printed stamps. Changed a car battery today which brought back memories of welding a screwdriver to a metal frame on an electric scooter. Turns out cars are a little more refined and it went well. I am alive and the car starts. Job done.
I used to watch movies that depicted the future as a sort of glowing white, Apple Mac, technology driven sort of place and often thought how that really seemed to miss the very important human factors of mess, laziness, dirt, sweat, blood and emotional turmoil. I could never see how a gently evolved primate could ever be all clean and stark on this planet and I still can’t see it. This year has been a stark contrast to the last fifteen (maybe twenty) years of my life as I move out of full time work with no real focus on where my interests lie. I’d like to say it has been a time of reflection and focus but in reality it has been a weird grasping adaptation to flexibility and an endless effort to appreciate my own worth. It has been fascinating to say the least. Apart from taking a break from the idea of a ‘job’ my focus has been to complete the renovations on the house, primarily repairing and painting the exterior and doing the small maintenance work we have had to let slide over the last decade. The cost of getting someone to paint the house was more than we would have earned comfortably in the time it will take me to do the work so financially it was a no brainer. I now get to drop my daughter off at school, pick her up again and work with her on her learning which is a first in her life and mine. Emotionally it has taken some getting used to from all involved. It’s not easy to go from being the main financial income earner (for most of your adult life) to having contract work and focusing on my own house and projects. For the first time I also have no idea what I want to focus on next so it is now up to opportunity for the next change to occur. It should be interesting if nothing else. I think I’m ready for the challenge.
As for ‘jobs’, I have become very conscious of how obsessed this nation is with the idea of a ‘job’. Work seems to have become abstracted to a point that the actual position, income and time are more important than the work itself. This feels very similar to the obsession schools have with qualifications over actual learning and skill. I recently experimented a bit with people’s reactions to unemployment by answering the “What do you do?” question with “I’m unemployed”. The results varied between low level horror and pity with some people desperately trying to find me a job. I also found that, “I am self-employed” led to further “but what do you do?” prompts and if I added where I live in this city (one of the lower socio-economic areas) things really got sad. I am increasingly aware that being employed in a job does not necessarily mean you are doing anything of value to wider society and that is okay but maybe not a good basis for ranking people’s worth. As I am now painting the house I like to refer to myself as a “Painter and Decorator in Linwood”, none of which is very accurate but the comic value is excellent. I am also doing some tutoring work at the School of Product Design at the University of Canterbury but that just attracts the job vultures and is nowhere near as fun to play with (although the work itself is quite fun).
When I visited High Tech High in San Diego last year one of the things Larry Rosenstock said was “Don’t separate hands, minds and disciplines”. It really resonated with me, partly as a Designer who believes the process should include more than just the conceptual phases and as a Teacher who believes students should bring ideas and physical work together. A lot of the ‘jobs’ out there have separated these elements too much and place too much value on the academic or management roles within work at the expense of the practical, physical and co-ordinated elements. We have in effect separated our hands, minds and disciplines in the name of specialisation and I think we are seeing some of the adverse results of this in our communities and attitudes to each other.
This year, for me, I look forward to finding ways to stay sane, figure out my next focus and area of interest (dare I say excitement) and find people I enjoy working alongside on things that feel meaningful to me. Hopefully not too much to ask of our slightly dirty, messy, tumultuous, biological World that keeps pretending to be shiny, white, structured and mechanical.
The end of December and about to head away for a New Year with family and then off camping over January. Our daughter is rolling up on 8 and getting taller, increasingly clever and talkative. I finished up my secondary teaching role at the end of the year to take some time and focus back on my own work ideas for a bit. I also need to paint the house and generally clean up the property a bit.
The Boma Fellowship made for an interesting year and, as expected the trip to the U.S. was both great fun and very enlightening. High Tech High and the D.School were stand outs for me in terms of education and how I want to teach. In particular the D.School X’s liberatory design process help pop a missing piece into my classroom work. A visit to IDEO in San Francisco widened my expectations of Design work in NZ and the prototyping space made me lose my shit for a moment. Love the idea of a role that helps prototype elements of a wider solution. While in San Francisco I also took the chance to go over to Oakland and Berkeley and eventually found myself at 924 Gilman Street. Excellent to see a place that so many bands I love played at.
As the year rolled on I found myself struggling with my role as a teacher in a system I no longer have any respect for. The courses idea was working well for students willing to take a chance and take their focus off of qualifications as a central point of education. Those who couldn’t do that bombed almost completely as they tried to complete a year of work in the last three weeks. It was demoralising to say the least and coupled with a year of fighting for small changes to the system and the intense classroom work with students the thought of going back for another year was just depressing. To counter all of that I have built up my own workshop and am going to focus on contract work for a while that lets me continue working in education while doing my own thing. Hopefully there is a good balance in there somewhere.
Another round of reflection in process and this time it’s a good look at my work and how I can do things in a different way. This year is proving to be an interesting one with a number of quite heavy challenges. My senior courses are all project-based and student-driven and the classroom is now much more like a Design studio.The junior classes are all working on projects that mix digital technologies with fabrication and simple Design process. The seniors are all working with Design Thinking (based on the approach used at the d.school) and are beginning to define their projects. The back of the room is a fabrication area now and also sports the arcade machine that I built a few years back. It is all working as expected and a few more students are beginning to understand and appreciate the approach. Some are still bombing furiously in this structure and simply cannot cope with the freedom. Energy-wise I am already ruined. The workload for a single teacher is too high and I have already begun to remove some school-driven administration from my day. I am also in conflict with a number of school systems that no longer make sense to the course design I have in play.
This year I am part of the BOMA fellowship that was set up for Christchurch teachers to develop ideas and explore things like exponential technologies. The major draw card for me is the trip to the U.S. to see schools like the K12 d.school and High Tech High and get a feel for how they operate. I am also very keen to see the teachers in action and their interactions with students. The programme has accelerated my reflection processes which, for better or worse, has me questioning my place in the current education system and whether there are other, better ways to be involved in the education of young people.
The house has moved forward again with the new deck all complete. Had some stunning builders who did amazing work and have provided a space that is now usable and pleasant. We have been getting used to taking breaks on the deck and can now eat out there and have BBQs. I also managed to sort out a robot lawnmower so I am now finally sitting on my deck watching the grass grow and then watching the robot make it short again. Not nearly enough time in the workshop and a lot of my personal projects are on hold. This year is one for looking back and forwards and deciding if I take a break from a fixed job and start doing things for myself again. I like that idea but am now finding it a bit scary to move on to my own thing. I guess twenty odd years of consistent fulltime work does that to you but it’s well worth a rethink now.
Three weeks into term 4 and the seniors all finish up tomorrow so they can go and prepare for exams. I’m still dumbfounded at the amount of energy, time and money that goes into this one form of assessment. It’s very strange. Most of my students have worked their way pretty solidly through the year and it has generally been good fun. Watched a few good kids get down on the world towards the end of term 3. Always hard to watch.
My classroom is becoming a Design studio now with lots of little fabrication machines all dedicated to prototyping ideas. I’m focusing on small studio sized machines that are financially accessible to both the school and the students. The senior courses have been renamed to Product Design for ease of understanding but remain much the same in terms of student choice and management. Next year is looking busy but reasonably positive. It will be interesting to see if students warm to the more open and flexible learning opportunities or whether they will be beaten down by credits and exams again.
After a brief rework of some shoddy painting we are finally preparing to get the deck built. This house renovation has been a long term plan and this is the last major part. Once it’s built we are down to finishing the house painting and tidying up the property a bit more. Looking forward to just being able to live here.
After the rather untimely and sad loss of our kitten, two small guinea pigs joined the household and have taken up a corner of the lounge. They migrate outside on nice days to a rather luxurious hutch and have turned from small fluffy things into quite large fluffy things. So far they seem to have a good life that revolves around eating, sleeping, crapping … actually that seems to be all they really do. They were summarily named Rocky and Jojo by the resident 6 year old. The names seem to fit the little black and white brothers.
I recently migrated from my Pebble Time smart watch to an Amazfit Bip, partly because I could make my own watchface and partly because I wanted to have things like heart rate and activity monitoring. Leaving the Pebble still feels a bit sad but things move on I guess. I quite like the Bip and apart from missing the Pebble’s stunning timeline feature it does pretty much everything I need it to without the need to remortgage the house.
Life continues to be interesting …
Rain, dark and cold. It’s winter in NZ. I remember Norway had snow and cold without the wind and drizzle. We get flooding and mud … fuck loads of mud.
Finally have power back on to the workshop and am cleaning the place up so I can get in their and get back into making stuff. The CNC router is calling and various bits of wood need to be screwed together. There is limestone to carve and screen printing to do. It gets wifi and music and is a great place to hide from the World for a bit.
Still working in a school. My classroom is starting to feel like a slightly chaotic Design studio. This is a good thing. The student projects are starting to look good and some of the students have surprised themselves. Even seen some individual thought and imagination peeking through in places. I’m done listening to teachers wank on about assessment and standards and am having a great time with the laser cutter and getting sewing machines into my room. An airbrush has made an appearance and I bought myself a new round of Adafruit gear to play with.
It’s a mixture of dark, dreary and moderately interesting work at the moment but to the cunt who ran my cat over and left him to die … Fuck You!!
A time of trying to battle through some things and a time to review how I am working through my life. I am currently struggling with my interest in teaching against my growing enthusiasm for doing my own thing again. I am increasingly liking the idea of working for myself again and after years of teaching kids to be imaginative and creative, recovering some of my own imagination and creativity in areas that I am interested in. The current struggle revolves around money and stability which I know from experience to be illusions at best and a lack of interest in going back to I.T. as it currently stands. It is an interesting and often painful process to look at old contacts and realise how much time has passed, look at old skills and realise they no longer hold the same place in your heart, and the things that people currently seem to place value on and realise it does not match with your own. I don’t remember it being this complicated last time but I guess a few things have changed since then.
The feeling of being separated from society is increasing as well. This may simply mean I need to get out more and meet people who match whatever my new interests are (still figuring that out I guess). Being part of the Board of Trustees at the local primary school has revealed more than I was hoping to see and in particular the high levels of dysfunction a surprisingly large number of families are experiencing around these parts. Juxtiposed with a mainstream focus on jobs, money and what I would described as dictated rules things are feeling a bit grim. It is possible that being a teacher in the midst of all of this is not helping. There is something nihilistic about watching a system like education straining under the weight of issues it was never designed to deal with. I can imagine that people working in health and justice are feeling much the same. I can feel that Fight/Flight response kicking in, which is never a good sign, and it’s starting to say “Run!”. Not sure where it wants me to run to but I guess that response was never big on details.
It is fair to say life continues to be challenging and interesting … at least I’ll keep telling myself that if the alternative is screaming and running away … somewhere.
The third year teaching at Burnside High School is under way and progressing well. New and improved course ideas that let students design and manage their own projects and a new way of teaching technical skills. It’s tiring and tricky keeping it all balanced but I think it’s going to be well worth it. The whole apporach is also giving me reasons to experiment with a laser cutter and try out new techniques that integrate different media. Loving the idea of fusing fabric and 3D printed items.
Been playing with Google Home, wifi lights and home automation. Along with asking a speaker to turn on lights at night and play music it has been fascinating to watch our wee girl ask questions and experiment with talking to computers.
We are now mortgage free. It sort of happened in a planned way and without much fanfare but it is one hell of an achievement and one that should make things more flexible over the next few years. I am dying to find a way to make work more flexible while retaining the opportunity to work with young people doing Design work. Should be an interesting time.
Another term 4 as a secondary teacher and it’s been a full year. I finally matched my project-based courses with student driven assessment and found some balance in it. A few changes sorted for next year and things should really start to take shape. My students are allowed to bitch, moan, get excited about something, give up, not give up and a generally be human but they have found that I am not ever going to engage if they talk about exams, credits, getting a job, or the latest iPhone.
It’s been a year of learning new things. Things I have wanted to try for a while now but never had the resources to do. Things like learning to airbrush (with actual real life paint), keep a tropical fish tank, have a workshop with CNC tools in it, and make an arcade machine. It’s been a lot of fun and as long as I don’t show too many adults what I’m doing things seem to go okay. I fully understand why workshops are so compelling now and painting flames with an airbrush is wonderfully therapeutic. It is also the first time in a long time that I have felt no compunction about doing something as a hobby rather than forcing it into a commerical design outcome. My workshop has become about art rather than design and I’m finding it’s a nice balance. I also get to listen to music out there … from my phone … through a bluetooth speaker. I’m now old enough to think that is both very cool and a little bit surprising considering I still have a box of tapes and CDs kicking around somewhere.
Looking forward to a gentle term 4 and a summer holiday filled with building stuff, punk music, hammocks and home brew. Roll on 2017.
2017. It keeps occurring to me that the 90s were quite a long time ago. They were formative years for me and now I now sort of understand those old guys who listen to ‘old’ music and seem stuck in a specifc timeframe. Stick with a good thing I say. A colleague from my early days of web design passed away under fairly tragic circumstances recently. We had not really talked in the last few years as our personalities moved further apart but it has been a striking reminder that people are not around forever. I have also had some reflection about mental health and how important it becomes to balance all of the, often conflicting, obligations and responsibilities that acrue over a lifetime.
I have finally managed to recover these paid end-of-year school holidays and have been making the most of it. A lot of time and energy has gone into learning how to use the CNC router and I got to a point I wanted to order one for myself. It is interesting that ZYPE is now about CNC work like 3D printing and routing and the web and graphic design work has almost completely disappeared. I like that it has been able to change to meet our needs and interests.
The house has taken another step towards our final goal these holidays with paving down, gates installed, the workshop cleaned up a bit, grass sown and old parts of the garden sorted out. I took out a large flax bush that we originally put in to solve a flooding problem and now have a large area of the garden accessible again.
A new kitten has joined the family and our wee girl is starting to get her head around the reality of, not just a pet, but a cat … with all of their idiosyncrasies. It is nice to have an animal back in the house and he seems to have settled in well. The robot vacuum cleaner doesn’t seem to phase him and he has been exploring the house with gusto.
Damn if it isn’t almost the end of the year. The garage is built, the old garage is now a workshop and I’m planning for another year in the same school. Teaching young people is still good fun. After a few changes in direction over the last decade I’ve come to the conclusion I simply don’t think like the people I surround myself with and that is always going to be a conflict for me. I don’t get along with many of the people I worked with in I.T. and with the exception of a few notable people I do not really gel with Teachers. The thought patterns are too different. I am being described as disruptive and I have started to embrace that despite it causing a conflict in my mind. I seem to be at an age where a lot of things start to collide and all of the things I could either fight or ignore in younger years have to be dealt with in better ways. It’s an odd time.
Our wee girl starts school next year. Being a teacher at this time is both helpful and depressing. The optimist in me says it’s a great chance for her to grow, learn about people and herself, and that the local school is diverse and full of people who match my idea of good teachers to be a good start for her. The cynic in me hopes that as she becomes institutionalised she can retain her imagination, creativity, love of dancing, singing and a sense of humour that thinks farts and silly jokes are hysterical. There is something about being a man that seems to trigger a protective instinct in the face of a perceived threat and our education system appears as a threat to me. I hope that changes.
The distance I now have to travel to work is far enough that biking is no longer a feasible option. The combination of age, energy, time and distance have made it tricky and I am less fit that I am used to. After 20 years of biking to work it turns out I have no other methods of exercise and I hadn’t realised how important that was to me. Having to think about that now. Not used to feeling this stodgy and unfit. It has, however, encouraged me to look at electric bikes again as a way to reduce the ‘distance’ a bit. Will see where that leads over time I guess.
Another 5 weeks and the school year ends. Looking forward to a break but also looking forward to getting back into another year and finally developing the kind of course I really enjoy teaching. When Punks Rule The Earth indeed ….
Still teaching. Go me. I have been working through a particular thought these last few weeks. It constantly niggles at me that NZ society has become somewhat obsessed with ‘getting a job’. Maybe it goes wider than this little country but this is where my focus is. It made me wonder why, if we are so excited about everyone having a job, we continue to bother with education and why we don’t just focus on training. Anyone not into academic training could move towards any apprenticeship or intern schemes that are around or, failing that, into military training. The focus on jobs seems limiting and, I think, most of us know that a job is just a means to an end. Meaningful work, contributing to the community, generally being useful and, one would hope, creative and enthusiastic seems a much better goal. If we go for that we could develop an education system that encourages people to find the thing that gets them going and keeps them interested. Get a job or get a life.
The garage is finally built. A driveway is in progress now and as expected Winter has arrived in a flurry of rain, cold and everything not required for the pouring of concrete. Luckily I spread a load of top soil over the old driveway so that is now a long mud pit. One day I will look back on this and laugh … but today is not that day.
The wee girl is now a raging 4 year old with a vocabulary to match and excitement for the Paw Patrol. I have had to learn the words to the theme song on pain of death … literally … she was going to hurt me if I sang it to the tune of the A-Team one more time. She does not see any problem with the mud pit driveway. I should take a lesson from that I guess.
Half way through Term 2. The next holidays are all about getting the old garage turned into a work shop and a general clean up around the property. Roll on.
First term at Burnside High complete and well into the first week of the school holidays. Taking the chance to play around with personal projects, beat up the garden and reacquaint myself with the PS4. I make no bones about my job this time around. I enjoy teaching and am in a decent school but the holidays allow me time to do the things I really want to do. The more I reflect on life the more I feel we have got it all so horribly wrong. Our organisational structures suck all of the fun out of any enjoyable activity and our endless labelling and silo-ing of skills limits any real opportunities for people to expand, learn and apply new skills in a meaningful way. Holidays and breaks between jobs have always proven to be more meaningful and interesting in my experience. It is a shame we can’t find ways to harness that and allow people to contribute to our communities and society as a whole in ways that make sense to them rather than only on tasks with commercial value.
I had a moment where I thought I’d get involved in an education MOOC but after a quick read I realised it was a lot of big words, acronyms and talk resulting in … absolutely nothing. No changes applied, no pressure put on governing bodies, no push to change schools … just a lot of posturing and talk that no doubt will be used by many for self-promotion and various personal agendas. One of the issues with having been in a number of different organisations throughout my work life is that I have seen the same issues rise up in each one and the only resolutions I have seen are either the collapse of a team of people resulting in my eventual resignation or the complete removal of an existing culture resulting in my eventual resignation. It is very hard to stay optimistic in the face of such human failure. Talk is cheap.
All that said, the school is a pretty good gig and the holidays are awesome. Our new garage goes up soon giving me the second one to strip out and set up as a workshop. There are loads of interesting things to explore over the next few years and the new domestic level manufacturing options are looking really fun (eyes on the laser cutters and milling machines). The mix of digital and physical production is really interesting. In other news the orange tree I grew from seed and planted when we bought this place has fruited. We actually have oranges on a tree in our backyard.
Time to continue recharging my batteries and general enthusiasm for doing stuff.
Once again I am on the move. Moving on from the Mind Lab to take a teaching role at Burnside High School starting next year. While an interesting opportunity to reflect I am keen to find somewhere to work that is comfortable enough for a longer term. The reasons for moving on are varied and numerous but boil down to not wanting to teach primary age kids and not wanting to be in a start up again that lacks solid direction. Been there, done that, didn’t really enjoy it. I have bcome conscious of my general lack of creative enthusiasm, a change that has happened insidiously, and am looking for ways to rectify that. I want to get back to doing things that excite me. I have no idea what that means at this stage. I am under no illusions that moving back to secondary will solve this issue in the short term but I am keen to use the term breaks to revitalise my brain.
41. Yay me. The Mind Lab is proving to be pretty good fun and primary age students are great fun to be introducing to the range of digital tech we have on offer. Still finding our collective feet and it all feels like a start up in action (which I guess it is really) but so far it’s offering a good mix of teaching, learning and interactions with other teachers.
The new garage build is in progress … or at least it is sitting in consent stage waiting for final go-ahead. Hopefully we see something before the end of the year but we no longer feel any real hurry around this stuff now. I am looking forward to having a spare garage for a while to use as a workshop. There is a lot of wood that needs to be turned into something. I am seeing a coffee table in my future.
The end of my last school holidays. I have two more weeks to work out my contract at Linwood College before kicking off at the Mind Lab. Whether it’s due to being sick [go the holidays] or just getting a bit flat on the whole work thing I have given up on thinking about medium and long term planning. I never seem to have any accurate idea where I’ll be or what I’ll doing within six months and my current interests seem to flick around quite a bit.
Watching a robot [Roomba 880] vacuum my house at the moment. I have become quite attached to the thing as it nows wanders around the house to a schedule sucking up a surprising amount of crap and getting into places that haven’t seen a vacuum cleaner in years. It has even found a few small items I thought had been lost to the ages. Our toddler and cat are both quite excited albeit in different ways and the house is looking remarkably sparkly after a few runs. It’s nice when a piece of hardware does what it is meant to do and I for one welcome robotic servants into my home.
Speaking of hardware I moved my phone to the nightly builds of Cyanogenmod bringing it up to 5.0 of Android. It seems to have done wonders for the battery life of the phone [an old S2] and given the hardware a new lease of life.
The holidays saw the production of a new worm bin that makes use of the old bath we pulled out while renovating [some five years ago]. The worms seem happy so far, the property looks cleaner without a dodgey bath lying around and we should have a bit more room for the oddly large amount of organic waste we seem to be producing. The garden is going to be happy come Spring. I also beat up some of the trees around the front of the property that were threatening my new spouting. Years of neglect resulted in some odd growth so hopefully the pruning brings them back to reality.
Roll on the next two weeks. Will be interesting to see what I’m doing this time next year.