The Best Changes Are the Ones You Don't Even Notice

Change is something we'd conditioned to rail against. At its most basic change represents impending death and doom. Change is entropy, change is chaos, change is change.

But sometimes change happens and we don't notice it, changes occur beneath the level of our consciousness and we're able to continue as if nothing's changed at all.

Change is the only constant there is. Nothing is ever the same from one instant to the next despite appearances to the contrary (which are really just our own flawed observations). The basic tenet of existence is that existence is a never-ending series of changes.

Learning to embrace change takes time and effort and practice but is worthwhile in the long term in the reward of lowered stress, easier adaptability, flexibility and capability.

I've made a few changes on the back end to the blog here. Hopefully they'll make no impact on readability or access. The changes sure did make it easier to manage my domain though and that's a welcome change.

What's changing in your sphere that you embrace? What changes do you dread?

An Object Lesson

I just had a lesson delivered to me via the internets about trust, cookies and expectations of decent behavior.

In the course of my job, I am at four different school sites on a regular basis. At most of these sites, I take my laptop and do 90% of my work from it.

But at one site, I am fortunate enough to have access to a flat screen Imac with a huge hard drive. The upsides were good, I could leave my laptop at home and travel lighter, I could attach the projector permanently, I could delete all the music files that were inappropriate for an elementary school environment.

But I've just learned that leaving a computer with passwords logged, cookies enabled and, effectively, my entire digital life unlocked, is a very, very dangerous thing to do. Because I'm not in that computer lab all the time and I generally do not log everything out when I leave there, I am exposing myself to greater risk than I should. And, from this day forward, I will not.

That one tweet in my Twitter stream was like a blaring claxon call to arms, to protect my digital identity, to seal off easy avenues of entry and to make it more than passably difficult to infiltrate. Am I pissed off? You fucking bet I am.

And I'm going to make it perfectly clear to the person who posted to my Twitter stream just how fucking pissed off I am. And how much of an invasion he did by broadcasting his message to my audience. I'm actually kind of amazed at really how angry I am about this. Maybe part of that anger should be directed at myself for being too trusting (which isn't usually a problem).

Either way, there's going to be some changes made starting tomorrow morning at 8 am sharp.

Paradigm Shifts and Who ARE These Children?

It is just past 7 in the morning. At about twenty to seven, Sully was awake and tried to get up on our bed so he could dance. At seven Grady was asking to brush his teeth. Both are filled to the brim with goofy little boy excitement.

And me? I'm getting ready to go to work. Today is my first regular start and they must have sensed the shift in the universe around the house. Yesterday Grady kept asking where I was and I guess the boys did not want to miss a little bit of "Poppa-time" today.

They are hilarious little boys. Right now they are dancing on our bed to the goofy songs by The Wiggles and behaving like crazed monkies. And don't even get me started on Grady's "Taggy Politics", the kid has a very elaborate system for deciding which taggy is the one he needs at any given moment.

Oh yeah, I had more weird and very vivid dreams again last night. For like the fifth night in a row.

Changes Are Afoot

Rather than try to force my way back into the 9-5 world, which didn't really suit me all that well to begin with, we have decided to try to take my photography to the next level.

My new camera will be arriving next week and with it, hopefully, a new beginning to a more satisfying and fun career working as a wedding and event photographer. The camera wasn't cheap and it was hard to justify its cost but my wife and I have talked it over enough that we were both ready to plunge in and give it a go.

Keep your fingers crossed that we bob back up to the surface rather than get caught in the anchor that is another chunk of debt.

And with that mangled metaphor, I'm going to bed. Sully is going to get tested up at the university tomorrow, something for the sociology department. Ought to be interesting.