Hi all, from the Piedmont, where the hand sanitizers and Clorox wipes are flying off the shelves. Fortunately, I found an extra hand sanitizer on my desk this week, courtesy of my mom’s practical Christmas stocking stuffers.
The Wirecutter has a good page on how best to use hand sanitizer when you finally get some. The article links to a recipe to make your own sanitizer with rubbing alcohol and aloe vera gel; the CVS stores I went to this week said this was the reason they were also sold out of rubbing alcohol.
The Public Domain Review this month offers “two short, memorable, and mercifully amusing public service films made in 1945 and 1948” on how not to spread germs. The illustrated GIFs in this letter are drawn from the first film, Coughs and Sneezes, and were created by Okkult Motion Pictures. All Okkult animated GIFs published here under a CC-BY-SA license.
Starting Before You’re Ready
I ran across this great quote from Hugh Laurie, who most of you know from the TV show House:
It’s a terrible thing, I think, in life to wait until you’re ready. I have this feeling now that actually no one is ever ready to do anything. There is almost no such thing as ready. There is only now. And you may as well do it now. Generally speaking, now is as good a time as any.
Hugh Laurie
In talking with friends who either are or hang out with executive coaches, I finally came clean about my desire to work as a coach despite my feeling of not being ready.
I've been working with coaches for years on issues general (time management, spirituality, well-being) and specific (nutrition, fitness, even leaving the world of academe). I've learned a lot, gained a lot, and shared what I learned with friends.
I don't know why I felt embarrassed to admit this desire. But to admit that desire to myself and to others filled me with feelings of imposterism, hucksterism, and hubris. Which is to be expected, isn't it? Isn't getting over our own frightening thinking the essence of a lot of coaching?
I told them about my wonderful coach Mary and how her beliefs are mine: no one is broken, you don't need fixing, you already know what you want to do, and, unless you're in dire physical circumstances, the only thing you really need to deal with is the thinking that looks real to you in the moment. What's more helpful to most people who are stuck is to start creating something in the world that would not exist save for their energy and existence.
To clarify, my goal is not to be an executive coach. I don't have the standing or the credentials for that specific field. In fact, when I think about the coaches I've worked with who had an impact on me, few of them had any certifications or specific training. They were simply sharing what they had learned in their journey.
What do I know that I can share or teach? For right now: showing up. Getting started. Taking the smallest action to just get started has always been my biggest hurdle as someone receiving coaching -- so naturally, it's the most important thing I can think of to coach!
And as you may have guessed, writing this post was the first step in me getting started.
So — if you know someone who is stuck, who has goals they’re not meeting, who needs a change, needs TO change, and who would like for “someday” to hurry up already, please forward this to them or get in touch with me.
Thanks.
I subscribe to a daily email called Pome: “short modern poems for your inbox.” I loved the following poem, sent on March 1. Subscribe to Pome here.
Small Kindnesses
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”
Danusha Laméris
Creating long passwords and passphrases
On my Apple devices, I use 1Password to manage and track all my passwords. But I also need to create unique passwords every 60 days on my workplace Windows workstation for security purposes; I can’t use 1Password there. So coming up with a system to create easily memorable passwords or passphrases every 60 days is a necessity.
Here are some of the ways I generate memorable passwords:
A tried and true method for coming up with a password template you can use for any site, though as it was developed in 2005 perhaps I should let it go.
Creating Diceware passphrases to create strings of four to five random words. I don’t use this one so much anymore.
Another variation is to simply look around my office and pick out three or four objects linked by a special character (hyphen, period, etc.).
CriticalMAS’s “Mad Libs” method for creating passwords is what I use most often these days for passwords I have to generate periodically. You can start with the ideas MAS lays down but it’s important to make up your own rules as you get more experience using it.
I should note that I store all my passwords and passphrases as secure notes in 1Password so they’re accessible to me from anywhere.
Related: From the comments to CriticalMAS's post is this gem: The Guy Who Invented Those Annoying Password Rules Now Regrets Wasting Your Time. That article includes a link to the classic XKCD comic demonstrating that it’s the length of the passphrase that makes it unbreakable, not the combination of capital letters, numbers, etc.
I love good ol’ American vaudeville entertainers who had skill to burn. Here’s a clip of guitar-banjo-ukelele master Roy Smeck, the “Wizard of the Strings.” As he was not a singer, he developed some amazing novelty techniques to keep the crowd interested.
It’s a busy week at the day job. Bull City Commons requires some hands-on attention. I’m writing daily or near-daily posts and articles on LinkedIn as part of a 40-day experiment I’m running with my coach Mary. I’m also still not listening to podcasts for Lent; tomorrow I look forward to starting to an audiobook of Angela Carter short stories. I’m also reading for the umpteenth time UK coach Mark Forster’s book How To Make Your Dreams Come True. It was published in 2001 and some parts of it are really only making sense to me now.
Some things take time. Let them take the time they need to take.
I’m Michael E. Brown. One of my goals with my website and this letter is to keep in touch with friends and correspondents.
Learning As I Go is published on the 2nd and 4th Sundays of the month but the thinking never stops.