Nothing fancy this morning. Just getting going. I’ve got my coffee beside me but I really don’t need it. After over two weeks away from my job for the holidays I am rested and ready.
Today is my official first day back to work. I’ll work Tue-Sat this week. I woke up at 5:40 today as my body is still transitioning from East Coast time back to California time. I did my 20 minutes of silent meditation this morning in the living room and then about 10 minutes of stretching. I can feel the extra layer around my middle, the accretion of all those holiday meals and snacks. I want to get back in the pool this week, but I have to make a trip across campus an renew my gym membership first.
Last night I started my new seminar. It will run through April and it is called “An Invented Life: My Life, My Design.” There are two good friends of mine in the seminar with me, J. and KT, and it is going to be a blast. Jen babysat for us as Marisa had an evening commitment too.
This is the perfect timing for this seminar, the start of the new year. At my job as an admissions director, I’m looking at all of the exeriences that occur for new students after they are admitted to graduate school. There are all the things we have always done that we want to continue, but I’m also looking at what have we never done before that would make a difference. Specifically, I want to have the students have an opportunity to accelerate the community building aspects of their MBA and also to accelerate the academic aspects. Since our students are working professionals, they are older and have been away from campus for a while.
I think that I have turned off my brain about work enough over the last two weeks that there is space for some new thinking to arise.
That is one of the points of this seminar, that what brain science is learning that is so profound is how pattern-centric our brain processes are. We get into neural grooves and they become “how it is”, when there are always other variations of patterns available.
We are beginning a new parenting technique with Jack. It is from a book “1-2-3 Magic” that was recommended to Marisa. It seems very simple but at the same time it is much more useful to try the technique having “read the instructions.”
We did a role play with Jack. Marisa said, “OK Jack, we are going to learn something new. It is called “1, 2, 3″. Daddy and mommy are going to show you how it works. Daddy, you start.”
I made a pouting face standing in the kitchen and then in a loud voice I started to chant, “I’m using my outside voice. I’m using my outside voice. I’m being too loud.”
Marisa looked at me and said, “That’s 1.”
Jack was enthralled watching this Oscar-winning enactment between his parents. Maybe he was wondering if we had gone slightly mad.
I got still and looked around coyly then began again, “I’m loud. I’m loud. I’m loud.”
“Daddy, that’s 2.”
Jack clapped and stetched his neck watching, wondering what was going to happen next. I looked amazed, paused, scanned the ceiling and then began once more, “Too loud. Too loud. Too loud.”
“Daddy, that’s 3. Go to your room and take 2.”
Mommy then escorted me to my room, with Jack following along to see where this was all leading. I sat criss-cross on the floor and pouted and took some exagerated deep breaths and after I was sufficiently calm mommy declared that the time out was over and that I could come back and join her and Jackson in the kitchen.
I am thrilled to have this new tool in our toolbox. I am arrogant enough to think that people who use books to help raise their kids have either too high aspirations or too much time on their hands. Ha! This is the best thing ever. After 16 days of travelling with Jack, from Texas to Rhode Island to New Jersey for the Christmas vacation, I am clear that I need some new tools for guiding him at 32 months of age. He has language now and he is bigger and he gets bored and it takes something different to guide him. Bring on the books! This is helping.
I emailed with Nancy yesterday, the woman who is editing my book about being a daddy. She is completing a much bigger project that she’s worked on for the prior 6 weeks at 10+ hours a day. She needs a break but will begin editing my work on the 11th. I am excited. The goal is to have a print-ready manuscript and then I am deciding about print-on-demand and/or how to shop it to traditional publishers. This is all in the world of “never done before” and it is fun.
I keep remembering what I read in Stephen King’s book about writing. He says that he writes in two stages, door closed and door open.
Door closed is the first stage, and as the name suggests he writes with the door closed. It is just him and his ideas and he writes as fast as he can to stay ahead of the doubts which are never far behind. No one else is involved.
Door open is the second stage where he invites trusted friends and his editing team into the process and they see the work and give their feedback.
The other thing he says about writing is that it is a craft, like building cabinets or making shoes. You have to practice and dedicate time and do it a lot to get better at it. He says that he puts his desk in an out of the way corner of the house. He has to do that because “life is not a support structure for art, actually it is the other way around.”
Life will push art out of the way.
But art, placed back in front, will bring life along with it.
That is it for me. I’m off to my day and my February deadline and my goals and dreams to make things as fantastic as they can be at UCLA while I still be a good husband and father and make ends meet with these wonderful California pay cuts for this year and the never-ending flow of emails that come to computer… Ahh, left to my own thinking it is too much. That is why it is powerful to interrupt that thinking pattern and create something new. 1-2-3 for you and me. Magic.
Ciao for now,
Dylan
Dylan Stafford 
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