Author: neil

After two years of growing his hair well past his shoulders, the little lad went in for a ‘trim’ to a salon with his mum. He’s been talking about it for a few days, since he’s starting in a new school in a couple of days. He had asked my opinion a few times, and getting a ‘haircut’ was simply unacceptable to him (and my joke about getting one like mine was heresy!)

And so it began late this afternoon, the hairy saga.

Bad haircuts are rarely disastrous. Even when they seem so, it’s only temporary until the hair grows back (or you get a wig). That wisdom comes after years of haircuts (or balding, as I am).

For an adolescent though, they are worse than disastrous. They turn into a a time sink. The haircut, done by a young lady who may have thought him a girl, does accentuate his dimples and give him a sharply feminine look. He’s been staring at himself in the mirror, rearranging his crowning glory, constantly asking both his sister & I to opine on his appearance. The sunk cost – twice what it would cost at his (not recently) usual barber – has driven a different conversation between his mum & I.  Lots of perspectives have ensued, including a friend who’s staying over and has no background to this saga adding fuel to the hairy fire.

Tomorrow will see him get another haircut – and many internet searches are now being conducted to see what might be suitable.   Peace may finally reign in the household on this subject.

After years of ignoring the cough that rears its head ever so often, I finally saw a respiratory specialist today. My GP was stern about getting it checked out.

I was a few minutes early to the clinic. I was almost immediately impressed by the teamwork of the two ladies at reception, both in how they’d organised themselves and their workload, and how they coordinated phones and patients with finesse.  I had forgotten to take my referral document, and within minutes she had ensured a copy was on her records with a quick, warm, and persuasive phone call. Every patient was seen to with surgical precision, all while the phones kept constantly ringing. They both had a sense of humor, and the banter was hilariously entertaining even though I pretended to be buried in my phone.

My specialist was late – the explanation was printed at eye level “all doctors work at the hospital and are on call so they may be delayed or may take a call when they’re with you” – so for a while I became the only person in the waiting room with them.  The door burst open, and a lady with a voice like a foghorn, muted a little by the mask she was wearing, filled the room. She dropped the bags she was carrying on the floor, ripped off her mask, adn demanded to know where the pyschologist’s practice next door had gone.

The older lady at reception, K, calmly responded that they’d moved years ago. No she didn’t know where to. No there was no forwarding address. No  she had not told any of her patients either, based on the number of people who had come in the last year asking for her. Yes it was too bad that she’d moved. Yes, she must have been a really a good pysch.  Foghorn kept going for a while, calling someone to ask if they remembered the pysch’s last name. The lady she’d called clearly had a lot, and enough of Foghorn too, and you could hear it in her voice coming through the speakerphone.

This went on for a while, until K, dropped her voice and called attention to the fact that there were patients in the room behind Foghorn, and could she keep her voice down please? Plenty of apologetic noises later, Foghorn finally figured that she was going to have to do her own investigation to get the help she needed, and left as noisily as she had entered.

The three of us burst into laughter when the door closed. And in laughter, a small moment of connection at a human level. They told me how the incessant phone calls and the sometimes challenging patients made the day go by faster, kept them out of sin (the chocolate bars in the hard-to-get-to-drawer) and gave them stories to tell each other.

A small moment of human connection that they included me in.

Ah, and the specialist was one of the best explainers I’ve come across in a long time. I understand some of the possible causes for my cough, and more importantly, an aspect of my own physiology that I am starting to see in new light (or should I say hear with a new sound?)

“You don’t get better, you grow.” Bass virtuoso Jaco Pastorius

This quote caught my attention this afternoon as I caught up on my newsfeeds. (note to self: OpenCulture about French music teacher Nadia Boulanger.)  Six simple words that encompass a great many philosophies or mental models of the world and approaches to work or hobby or art and so on.

Weeks of writing later, scattered here and in my journal and in Notion and elsewhere, words are flowing easier. Not better :), pun intended. The growth has been in quantity, not necessarily quality. The growth has been in finding topics easily. The growth has been in finding, no, making time to write. The growth has been in confidence that I do have a voice that I can raise and make a little sense. The growth has been testudineous – at the pace of a tortoise. Barely discernible day by day, it has been making its presence felt in my fingertips.

It appears in my calligraphy too –  in the strength in my fingers, in how I’m holding the pen, the hairlines I’m able to write, the pressure on paper, the consistent slant angle, and so on. Learning is as much about study of form as it is of practice, and it’s something I suppose I’ve not focused on as much this sprint as I wanted.

Growth. Not just a mindset, although it might start there. Showing up. Doing what needs to be done consistenly even when I don’t feel like it. It no longer is a feeling, but a habit, like brushing teeth. Going back to the basics is what I can do, and I am the kind of person who does go back to the basics. That’s how you become a professional.

and here’s Jaco, accompanying the mid-week reflection 🙂

Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives. Such striving may seem admirable, but it is the way of foolishness. Help them instead to find the wonder and the marvel of an ordinary life. Show them the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples and pears. Show them how to cry when pets and people die. Show them the infinite pleasure in the touch of a hand. And make the ordinary come alive for them. The extraordinary will take care of itself.

A truck sideswiped our car on the freeway a couple of hours ago. We managed to get out of that with a destroyed passenger side mirror, a little shaken up, and little other damage.

A lucky escape when everything around us was whizzing by at about 100 kmph, and I’d slowed down just a bit when I noticed the drifting truck. To paraphrase Dana Meadows, whose writing is top of mind at the moment, slowing down is a good option.

The truck drove on, oblivious to the pickle he put us in (and possibly other motorists).

News of two distinct events came into sharp focus in the last few hours that serve as a start reminder that life can change in an instant.

The first involves a young man, the son of a friend of our family, who had a motorcycle accident, in a distant country where he just moved to with his partner. He’s survived the accident, and is in  an induced coma for the last few days, and will likely be kept so until the swelling in his brain subsides. His brother has flown to be with him and deal with the inevitable paperwork that accompanies any incident. The life he had planned with his beloved now hangs by a thread, and his aged parents are understandably distraught.

The other involves a close friend who decided he’s had enough of his job, and quit. He told his team about his decision, and it’s left them all distraught – he was/is a true leader, and has likely kept the people who work with/for him together, despite the opportunities for better pay that beckoned. The glue that bound them all together doesn’t exist anymore, and the opportunities they saw collectively don’t seem so attractive either.

In both situations, there’s more than just the individual affected in far more ways than come to mind immediately. Everything is connected: people make plans that involve other people – family, friends, colleagues – based on things taken for granted. When those plans go awry because the underpinning assumptions no longer hold, the outlook suddenly turns bleak.

In both situations, the clouds will pass. While the hurt and pain and heartache and difficulties remain, Life goes on. It always does.