Josh – Page 2 – Soul Repairs

On Bullies

by Laine and Josh | Community, God, Organizations, People

February 4, 2021

First, some history (and context!) from Laine…

I was overweight as a kid. Actually, I was overweight until I was in my mid-twenties, and then again for a while after I had my kids. But as a kid, in the 90s, it was an offense punishable by social ostracization. I was picked on throughout elementary school, to the point where I started calling myself fat so that other people wouldn’t do it first.

I moved at the end of 6th grade, to a much larger school. They mostly didn’t bully me for being overweight, but they did bully me for making out with my (female) best friend – which I did not, not that that matters aside from pissing me off even MORE about the sheer unfairness of it. I moved again at the end of 8th grade, to a smaller school, and found friends, and slipped into blessed nerd + “I’m in the school musical every year” semi-obscurity.

I dealt with one bully as a young adult, after I started my first job. I can see, looking back on it, that he probably felt threatened because, a) I was good at my job, b) I was on “his” project, and c) he perhaps felt like I was overstepping.

And then…no bullies. For a long time.

And then…more bullies showed up.

We’ve written about pieces of what happened at the church we were both members of. We have not written about what happened where we were formerly employed, out of (probably legitimate) fear of retaliation of some kind. But…suffice it to say that we’ve both run into a lot of bullies over the past few years. People we worked with, people we trusted. People we loved.

We try to explain a lot of patterns here. Patterns about fear and faith and hope and love, and how all of that comes together and applies to being a person. Patterns about how all of that scales to relationships (especially with God), and how it scales to and for organizations. A lot of these patterns, we figured out because…we lived them. We ran into really scared people trying to control what we did – and getting very very angry when we said no. That’s it. Just… no. We didn’t say, “you have to do what I say,” or “I’m going to make your life miserable for trying to tell me what to do.” Mostly we said, “please stop hurting us,” and “why are you trying to make me do something that I am sure is wrong?” and then eventually, just… no.

Sometimes “no” is a revolutionary act.

Decisions must be made…

Laine initially drafted this post in September of 2020. That’s actually the opposite of our usual process, typically we talk about things until it seems draft-able, then Josh does the initial draft. But this post began because Laine ran into a (comparatively mild) bully at work. And it brought back a lot of feelings about the other bullies we’ve recently run into, and a lot of sheer…exhaustion.

And then the election happened, and that brought with it more related feelings, and more exhaustion. And both the minor work bully and the election brought with them some clarity around what happens with bullies.

Bully (n): someone who does willful, targeted damage to other people in an effort to control them.

Because…bullies seem to win. The world actually seems to be structured for bullies – and for the control of other people. If you choose not to control other people, if you don’t play that game, if you flat-out refuse to play that game, then…you are an outlier. You stand out. You seem to invite bullies to take shots at you. But…that isn’t quite what happens.

Simply by existing, by living your life without controlling other people, you show the people around you that they too could choose not to control. You demonstrate, clearly, that another choice, a different choice, exists. This has the effect of forcing the bullies around you to choose if they will continue to bully – because some people behave this way because they don’t know another choice exists.

Bullies also force you to make a choice. Bullies force you to choose if you’re going to a) hide who you are in order to avoid the damage they might do, or b) very deliberately NOT hide, but instead choose that any damage is worth being yourself. As best as we’ve been able to figure out, bullies bully because they’re afraid they’re going to lose something that they think keeps them safe. Bullies need to control what they think keeps them safe so much that the people “in the way” become…dispensable.

So…if you’re the target of a bully, if you feel like your very existence invites bullies to take shots at you, then…that means that you’ve stumbled into the thing that they’re trying to hide away from the world – the thing they’re afraid they’ll lose. And it means that they don’t much like the fact that people exist who can’t be controlled into supporting their fears, and it means that they’re afraid that perhaps none of it was necessary at all.

It’s not your fault.

We’re going to say that one more time. It’s not. your. fault. We are emphasizing this because, again, it took us a long time to understand and accept it.

Mostly, with this post, we wanted to make something very clear – adult bullies exist. They exist anywhere that people exist, because people get scared, and sometimes those scared people end up with some kind of authority – real or imagined – over you and your life. This can be your boss, or your religious leader, or your government, or your significant other. Sometimes these people get SO scared that they forget entirely that you’re a person, and they just…want you to stop whatever you’re doing that seems to be a threat to them.

Regardless of what they say, it isn’t your fault. Bullies will tell you that it is, because they’re trying to convince you to change, and to hide, so that they feel more safe. You don’t have to do that. It’s scary not to, but…it is your choice. You can say no, and you can choose to be who you really are even if the bullies of the world don’t like it.

Sometimes “no” is a revolutionary act.

You won’t be alone.

The more we sort of…lean into this plan, the “be you and have fun” plan, the more we find other people who have figured this out. These people are some of the most truly supportive relationships that we have. So…while saying no to the bullies in your life, and choosing to be yourself, seems scary and like you’ll definitely be alone… you won’t. You will find your tribe, your people, your chosen family, and you will thrive. It’s worth it.

Stuff We Love: Kilts!

by Josh | People

January 28, 2021

I love kilts. I didn’t used to. I saw Braveheart and Made of Honor and thought huh, that seems…uncomfortably breezy.

But you know what? Pants are stupid. Also pinchy in places that shouldn’t get pinched.

So, after wearing shorts all Summer 2019, and rather enjoying not wearing pants (thanks COVID and my employer’s WFH policy and ban on work-related travel!), I decided to check out kilts.

I did a bit of shopping and landed at Damn Near Kilt ‘Em (DKNE) as my best first option. (L: Bonus – their name is a pun!) Their Sport Utility Kilt looked good – it had the pockets that I wanted, and cinching straps, and was made of cotton. I looked at their heavier-duty options (the Smithy, which is made of denim) and some of the simpler options, but decided that the Sport Utility was just right.

Josh in a kilt, on his motorcycle! (another “Things We Love” post maybe coming soon?)

Sizing is a bit tricky. To find the right size, you have to measure where you’re going to wear it, so around the waist or at belly button level. It won’t necessarily be the same as your pants size. My first attempt was L/XL size in grey – out of stock – so I went with blue. I got it, wore it on a hot week, and was happy sitting at my desk, lounging on the couch, or mowing the lawn. It was super comfy and cooler than shorts, and overall I was really really happy with it.

I found I needed a belt to help keep the kilt where I wanted to wear it. Kilt belts are a specific width – 2.25″, where the average pants belt width is 1.5″ or 1.75″ – so I didn’t already have one that would work. DNKE has belts, but they didn’t have any in stock in my size. Boo. So I kept shopping, and ordered a belt in the right size. I also got to pick out cool belt buckles, so that was fun.

I decided to order a second kilt, so I got the same style in olive – the lighter-colored stitching looks nice. I got a bigger size for this one – it’s a bit too big, but it can be adjusted to be the right size via the belt.

Wow, these things are comfortable. A few people have asked me why I went with kilts, and I always talk about the comfort when I answer. I also love the huge number of pockets, and how easy it is to get dressed and undressed. Pants are clingy and, as previously mentioned, pinchy, and taking them off or putting them on is very different than “undo belt and let gravity go.”

Some people look at me oddly, and at least one person was hostile about the idea of a man wearing a “skirt.” After processing my initial feelings about that, I landed on it being kind of…funny, actually. The whole experience reminded me that people being weird, or hostile, about the choices I make that don’t affect them tells me more about them than it does about me.

Just like smoking, moshing, or being a Libertarian, wearing a kilt is one of those things that will cause random cool events to happen in your life. Kilts are one of those magical things that take a lot of soul to wear, and they’ve caused several people to walk up to us and say, “Hey, cool kilt! I wear kilts! I love them!” and then we can talk for a bit.

There are all types, makes, and qualities of kilt, and since it’s an important piece of clothing, I suggest not starting out with the cheapest kilt you can get. Spend the money to get one that’s made well. A good quality kilt will last a long time, just like a good pair of jeans, and it will be flexible enough to adjust for fit with a belt or adjustment straps.

I love this thing. Super comfy, the fabric is soft and strong, and it’s pretty easy to care for – machine wash cold, don’t dry it in the dryer or it’ll shrink, so I hang it up to dry. Pleats are a core part of kilts, and I might have to learn how to iron or something or steam it, I don’t know. So far hanging it up makes the pleats mostly behave.

There are two ways to wear a kilt – with underpants and “regimental” – and since I haven’t been wearing underpants for a while now, I didn’t see the need to change. It has been a bit of an adventure when wandering around in public places – I’ve had to learn how to adjust how I place the kilt when I sit down for example. (L – which is highly entertaining, and part of why I generally avoid skirts…) But it’s been fun to learn, and very much worth it because of how much I love wearing these things.

Overall, the experience has been great, and cool, and comfy. COVID is actually a good time to try things that perhaps you wouldn’t otherwise. Stay tuned for how it works in colder weather, and seeing how that treats me. Scotland isn’t a warm country, and they figure it out….maybe I need those tall socks, hmmm.

Content-Generating Machine – or, A Love Letter to Creating

by Laine and Josh | People, Processes

January 21, 2021

We’re generally good at generating content. We have been as long as we’ve been working together, it was one of the first amazing things we noticed when working as a team. Other people dread putting together a presentation, or writing up a blurb for a document, or crafting an email to get the right message across – we don’t really have problems with that. No big deal, nonchalant shrug.

We commonly refer to this ability we have as a “content-generating machine.” We can – and have! thanks, you-know-who-you-are and your content smashing emergencies – knock out 90 minute presentations in a few hours. Have something to say, put it down, and polish it until it’s beautiful. It helps that we talk about our content between the two of us, for a long time, before we get to the point of putting (metaphorical) pen to paper, but…still. It’s cool, this magical ability that we possess.

…unfortunately for this narrative, we haven’t published anything here in a long time, with the notable and exciting (to us!) exception of last week. That’s because having something to say isn’t enough. You have to have enough soul – perhaps more precisely soul energy – to create. And you have to have even more soul to share what you create in a public place. Take enough soul damage and…it gets progressively more difficult to share.

Having something to say isn’t enough – take enough soul damage, and it’s hard to share.

Creation, and Soul Bruises

I would follow the trail of this fabulous squirrel ANY-DAMN-WHERE. – L.

Creation requires soul because creation comes from the soul – any kind of creation. Writing (fiction or non-fiction), composing (lyrics or music), drawing, painting, sculpting, building, dancing… the best creative things are outpourings of our souls and their many many moods and feels. Creation is you – the core you that wants to be known and understood and also is super afraid of being alone because of who you really are.

Writing, at least the non-fiction kind that we do, takes thoughts that typically start as impressions and pictures and patterns that we see, and puts them into words in a sentence, and then a paragraph, and eventually an arc of something that’s hopefully interesting and ideally somehow meaningfully true for our audience. It requires paying attention to those thoughts, and weaving them into something that’s linear and logical. It also requires remembering the things that we wanted to talk about that were related, and knowing what’s a finite unit of “blog” or “talk” and what’s maybe a, uh, squirrel trail.

Writing, creating in general, also requires accepting that the thoughts you have, or the soul that you want to share, is worth something – that it’s worth the work of getting it out of your head at all, and also that it’s worth sharing. It takes love, and creativity, and storytelling, and vulnerability. And…if you’re as soul-bruised as we were at various points in the past year or so, well…souls can’t create if they’re beat up too badly. Not easily, anyway.

Creation, and Soul Healing

“The opposite of war isn’t peace – it’s creation.” (La Vie Boheme B, Rent)

The problem with creation requiring a healthy(ish) soul is that creation itself lets you heal. It lets you process your feels, and tell your story. Creation lets you heal the bruises and cuts and scrapes on your soul.

But the great thing about creating is that sometimes, the things that are created have the magical impact of helping other people heal, and process. And when you’re too soul-bruised to create yourself, you can heal in perhaps a less direct way than, say…sharing your soul on a blog.

Maybe it comes from switching to a more private kind of creating, or a different kind. Maybe you find other people’s songs that fit exactly what you’re going through, or maybe other people’s stories tie directly to your experiences – writing them, or reliving them by way of a great author.

Basically, you can heal, and grow, via creating, yes – but you can also heal, and grow, via experiencing other people’s creations.

How to Get Back to Creating

It’s okay. It will happen.

That’s a thing that Laine worries about, a lot, whether her soul will…well, repair (no pun intended, hahaha) enough to have the capacity to create again. That worry is almost certainly a relic of 30+ years of untreated ADHD and feeling like getting her brain to DO the thing was a constant battle.

But…the fact is, it always comes back. When enough has healed, and enough time has passed for some brave to build back up, the drive to create always reappears. Not being alone, literally, helps a lot – as in, creating with someone else and getting that built in support and shared brave.

Be you, and have fun.

When you find you can create, when there’s enough room in your soul to be that core you again, it will just…flow. Your mind and your soul will line up, and everything just…knows what ideas connect where, like building up a Lego wall. If you can heal the damage, and you can get past the critics in your own head, and just… be you and have fun, creation is a wildly strong source of joy. You can let yourself be yourself, and worry about if it exactly “makes sense” or is “valid” later.

If you’re not bruised, beaten, scared of rejection, or simply tired, then creations just…appear out of nowhere.

We interact with a lot of people who don’t create, or who don’t share what they create, for a lot of reasons. If you fall into this camp, we’d strongly encourage you to think about why not, and if you like, send a message our way and tell us, or use us as guinea pigs to share what you create with a very controlled subset of “everyone.” We’d love to hear from you.

For us, once we’ve healed enough to want to create again, the “why not” is always fear – the same fear we see over and over as the core fear of everyone, the fear of being alone somehow. Bruises are just a hurt-reminder of that fear, whispering that maybe it’s really true, that fear that we’re alone…maybe it’s really true.

It’s not true. We promise. Life maybe has sucked, life maybe still sucks, but creation lets you deal with that. And actually dealing with stuff will leave you (has left us) much less alone.

If you pay attention, it all works out pretty well

by Josh and Laine | God, Government, People

January 14, 2021

There’s a lot of weird stuff going on. It’s the second week of 2021, and instead of any kind of return to normalcy, it looks like the world is falling apart and the USA is tearing itself apart.

The news seems to be mostly designed to result in people thinking….uhhh…whatever the news people want their listeners to think? Probably? At best, the news outlets are perhaps trying to “fix” things the best way they know how – but that seems to mostly resemble trying to control people into aligning to their version of reality. To think like them, so everyone can be “safe.” Or, they’re trying to get ratings and behaving like a business instead of an organization with a responsibility to inform in a fair, balanced, accurate manner. None of these reasons, or any others that we can think of, are good enough to make inaccurate and downright confusing views of reality as presented by national news outlets not controlling, knowingly dishonest, or awful.

Aside from the news, the two main political parties of our national bipartisan system seem to be doing their best to rip each other apart – and in the process, rip apart any unity that exists in the country. They mostly act like toddlers fighting over an old, worn out blanket that they both have decided is their very most favorite.

Social media, AKA “people talking about stuff on the internet,” is doing its darnedest to implode. More people are talking than listening, and the resulting echo chambers are…well, echoing, at maximum volume. Everyone seems to be getting real offended at anyone who disagrees with them – and not just offended. People are seeing anyone who disagrees with them as an immediate enemy. With COVID, our primary social interaction has moved to online, and when it’s that hostile for dissenting opinions or ideas, something is very wrong.

Also, as of now, the sitting US President is so painful or dangerous to listen to (apparently?) that he doesn’t even get a voice on social media outlets. In addition, lots of other people who just…again, disagree, with the privately-held social media companies are banned. Literally silenced just for having opinions.

As two veterans of divorce, we recognize some of these patterns. It very much feels like the last stages of a relationship ending. Josh got some advice, about a year before his divorce was certain:

As long as you’re arguing, you’re okay – but if you go quiet, it’s just a matter of time.

As a country, we/the US has been arguing violently for about…30 years? We stopped civil discourse… at some point. We both began voting in presidential elections around the time that the results were so close to 50/50 that the winner could not be immediately determined. It’s not acceptable to talk about politics in “polite” circles, because it’s just assumed that we can’t agree and that relationships can’t survive in the face of that kind of disagreement.

You can’t have a political opinion in a public place without risking those relationships, and probably being disowned by at least two people. Any opinion at all is going to result in someone telling you that you’re a bad citizen, and not a “real” American, and also that you very definitely couldn’t possibly be a good person. Depending on where you say it, you will probably also be told that you’re not a good God person, or that you ignore science, or that you’re stupid and your opinions are irrelevant.

We do not accept differing opinions with a listening ear anymore.

Josh saw a video of a family being carted off to jail because they got together for a holiday party and can still hear the screams of their kids. Something is very very wrong.

What the hell happened? What can we do about it? What should we do about it? These are the questions we’ve been asking ourselves, ad nauseum.

We Forgot About Science

So…remember science?

Not, “you have to obey our commands or we will lock you up,” or “just listen to the experts without asking questions,” or “I have statistics so you have to do what I tell you,” or…really anything where people tell you what to do.

We’re talking about that thing where people went out and observed stuff, and thought about it intelligently, and then came to conclusions that were backed by empirical evidence. Maybe they had a hypothesis first, or maybe they observed a cool thing and then tried to understand and explain it. A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, people said stuff, and then they went and figured out what they thought, for themselves. And often, they found out that they were wrong in their first, second, and maybe even third assumptions, and that the first and third conclusions were also wrong. But they kept looking, with open eyes. They also argued a lot, got offended, and generally disagreed, all for the purposes of finding the truth.

Science by this definition is, was, and always has been a violent attack on dogma. It doesn’t matter whose dogma, or which dogma, we’re talking about – but often, it was the ruling body and the church (or both). The “let’s figure out what reality is” crowd was perceived as a threat. Sometimes they were exiled. Sometimes they were killed. Often they were mocked and told they were crazy.

Also, sometimes they got rich, and sometimes they gave away their inventions for the good of mankind.

Pursuit of actual reality is one of our highest moral values, because that’s where you can most clearly see God. When teaching Actual Digital Transformation, or any other kind of soul healing, there is no substitute for Trying Stuff Out and Seeing What Happens (TM). We have considered actually patenting our methods, because they are so revolutionary today.

…LOLJK no we haven’t, that was totally some pained sarcasm, because the pursuit of actual reality seems to be painfully and confoundingly revolutionary, most of the time.

We’re sick of being told to “trust” anybody without question. Trust has to be built. We’ve individually, together, and also collectively as a society, been lied to for so long by authority figures that the idea of unquestioning trust of authority is offensive, and frankly ridiculous. Present evidence and let people choose, and ~~allow~~ encourage dissent, or GTFO.

If people are:

banning other people from saying they’re wrong
playing into our fear of being alone in order to try to manipulate agreement (“if you don’t agree, you aren’t one of us.”)
saying anything like, “you should blindly trust us because we’re the experts”
threatening, including “we’ll put you in jail”

…then they are very much not to be trusted.

We have somehow arrived at this stupid, and dangerous, place where we think that we can’t argue with something if it’s deemed “science.” We cover our ears and run when people say things we don’t like to consider. We can’t handle the thought of being wrong.

Why?

We Forgot about God

There’s something wrong with the world today,
I don’t know what it is.
Something’s wrong with our eyes.
We’re seeing things in a different way,
and God knows it ain’t his.

Livin’ on the Edge, Aerosmith

We seem to have forgotten, or perhaps some of us never knew or accepted, that there’s something bigger than all of us. Something so thoroughly Real that it is the authority we must all bend to. Something exists outside of all of us that it is beyond complete human understanding yet is present in every choice and action that we take. Something that if seen directly brings us to tears of joy and sweet sadness. It, He, can be found in being actually loved, or in seeing something so beautiful we cannot speak. It’s in every one of our souls. It’s in the babbling of a madman and in the unquestioning belief of a child, and in the most dangerous thought a person can have.

We forget that we can’t know things perfectly. We forget that we cannot control reality, and that we don’t need to control each other. We forget that any plan can fail, and that good things happen that we did not make happen.

God is behind all of this ~~mess~~ beauty and he’s working hard to break the chains we tend to put on ourselves. We bind our souls, thinking we must create all of the good we have in our lives, and we must keep ourselves safe from our greatest fear: being alone for who we are. That’s behind all of the “one of us” and the tribalism and the exile fears, and it’s why we think we have to agree (or at least pretend to agree) with our peer group, or risk that we ourselves will be excluded, exiled, and forgotten.

We Forgot We Don’t Have to be Afraid

Over and over, the damage we have taken personally, and the things that get in the way of actual good change, can be traced back to people being afraid.

Collectively, we’re all afraid. We’re afraid of losing the power to take care of ourselves. We’re afraid of being rejected, and as such, we’re afraid of whatever other people tell us we should fear.

A lot of those fears are real. People do sometimes hate us for what we believe in. People have lost jobs, and careers, because of economic fallout from COVID and the government’s response. The dollar is losing value at an impressive rate, so money isn’t really safety either (and in fact it never was…). People (us included!) have lost relationships once they decided they were no longer going to be controlled or hide. People hold on to their guns, and their stuff, and their relationships, and their opinions, and their tribes, and they hold on really really tight because they fear what might happen if they lose the things that they think keep them safe. People fear what they will do if they lose what matters to them, or if they lose what keeps them chained.

Angel of death and mercy,
come take me from this cage.
Cause these four walls and iron bars have been
witness to the rage,
of a thousand broken hearts, in chains…

In Chains, Shaman’s Harvest

We fight so hard to make laws and control each other in order to keep these chained things, but actually we do more damage to ourselves than to others when we seek to control – when we employ violence, rejection, hatred, disrespect, manipulation, denial of wants and needs, etc. It’s a national tragedy, and a human tragedy. We’ve fought these types of wars for decades – drug wars, culture wars, foreign wars, civil wars – because we thought that they were required in order to be safe.

But…actually, we don’t have to be afraid.

If you pay attention…it all works out pretty well.

We forget, so much, that love is much greater, and much stronger, than fear. It doesn’t always look like that, but…that’s how it lands. We forget that we can just…be ourselves. We forget that we can just be people and love each other and that…actually, life is pretty good.

You won’t be alone. People will like you, no matter your beliefs, statements, opinions, hot takes, or economic status. People will like you regardless of your tribe, your political orientation, or whatever other orientation you have. People will like you because you are a person. Not all people. Sometimes people will double down on being afraid, and they will not be willing to let you be free. But…you still won’t be alone. We know this because simple existence, simple “you are a person,” is all it takes for us to like someone. You are made of God-stuffs, and you are beautiful, and you are worth knowing and loving just because of that. If you’re hungry, I’ll give you from my food. If you’re sick, I’ll help take care of you.

It turns out, the real solutions win, most people are generally trying to be good, and love eventually wins over fear.

So…what now?

Yeah, it’s a valid question. And in some ways, we have literally no idea.

What we do know, or at least are pretty sure of, is that we need to apply the basic, and admittedly very complex, remedy of stop trying to control each other to the nation as a whole.

People have the literal God-given right to be free, and that needs to be respected and honored. We were once the “land of the free and the home of the brave,” and we seem to have en masse forgotten how to do that. But…actually, it’s okay, guys. As a nation, and beginning with ourselves, we need to process our feels, as much as that sucks, and default to freedom and not controlling each other. We need to realign to reality.

….aaand we’re back!

by Josh and Laine | God, Organizations, People

January 13, 2021

It’s been a long time since we blogged.

We’ve missed it. A lot. But…like our blog says, life is simple, not easy, and we’ve found that sometimes soul repair takes a lot of resources.

One thing we say in our talks is that transformational change starts with changes that individual people make in or for themselves. We think that’s probably always true, that large-scale change typically starts with individuals, and, meta, we’ve spent the time that we weren’t blogging working through a lot of stuff – stuff inside of our own souls and lives that needed to be processed, changed, and understood.

One major example of that is that we both got divorced. We each had to work through a lot – like a lot – of related feelings. Damage and scars, and…well, basically all of the feels.

This is an accurate representation of what that process looked like:

I Just Have A Lot Of Feelings GIFs - Get the best GIF on GIPHY — Having a lot of feelings, thanks Mean Girls!

We both came to points in our marriages where they were too broken to proceed. Divorce is complicated, and figuring out life going forward is a lot of work.

But we’ve done a lot of that work (probably not all of it, wince), and, as often happens, it’s turned out better than either of us thought possible. We expect that we’ll probably write more on the topic of divorce, but if you have any questions about the process or just want someone to talk to, feel free to reach out – our contact info is all over the place. I (Josh) didn’t even see it as an option for a long time, and only when Laine decided to do it did I even realize that I didn’t have to be stuck forever.

We’re both still processing a lot of what happened there, but it seems relevant given the other cultural things we’ve experienced. We wrote and delivered a new talk called Not a Cultural Fit, and we each drew on our marriages to see and explain and double-check as valid the patterns that we discuss in that talk. In the end…sometimes people just don’t fit, and trying to grimly power through only makes everyone miserable. You can find a new job, and you can find someone, or some organization, who actually likes you instead of tolerates you. (oof)

Our plan for the blog is to get back in the swing of making content regularly, continuing with our opinions on stuff, and also things, and the observations that we have. Basically, we’re going to pivot again and always toward our favorite piece of advice, for everyone:

Be you, and have fun.

If you’ve stuck it out, waiting for us to come back, we really really appreciate it. If you’re new, hi! Either way…

The Emperor's New Groove — BOOM, baby. We’re back.

Presentations Tips and Tricks

by Laine and Josh | People

February 4, 2020

We really love creating and delivering presentations. It’s part of our day job, and also something we’ve sought outside of our day jobs – hence the conferences we’ve talked about here. We sort of stumbled on to the fact that we have an absolute blast creating and delivering this kind of content together, but we’ve been going strong with it for almost 3 years.

We get asked sometimes about our pro tips for creating content, delivering content, getting talks accepted at conferences, speaking at conferences, etc. We’re still learning too, but we figured we’d put together what we’ve learned so far.

Preparation

Obviously, making content is work. Thinking about it, making it linear (#LainieProblems). Figuring out how to explain it, clearly (one hopes…). With presentations there’s a visual component as well – how do the visual aids actually help to tell the story? Should you use no visual aids and instead just…have a sort of facilitated conversation? One of our friends and favorite people, Arty Starr, does this sometimes – in fact, attending one of her talks that ended up more conversation than presentation is how we met her in the first place.

The best plan for how to prepare is…well, to figure out how YOU best prepare. That might be different depending on the topic – you might need more backup resources available if you’re talking about something highly technical, for example. The best plan we know of is to prepare until you’re less worried – but stop preparing once you’ve reached the point that more prep makes you more worried. More on why “worried” is the barometer in a minute, but this could run the full spectrum of no prep at all once the content exists to hours and hours of content prep and revision and more hours and hours of practice.

Reps

Reps as in, repetitions. Practice. Just…give talks. It doesn’t really matter who for, although it’s good to build your reputation as a speaker and Knower of Things in the circles you’ll want to speak in. Really, though, the point is mostly to get practice speaking in front of people. Start to understand how you affect other people and how they affect you in that context. If you can combine this practice with delivering your own content, that’s even better – get a feel for how people respond, and if it makes sense to them.

Note we didn’t say if they like your content. Everyone has their own opinions, and their own feels – which translates to, not everyone is going to like what you present or how you present it. That’s okay, take feedback or don’t as it makes sense to you – but definitely pay attention to the responses people have and then make your own decisions.

Fun fact – Laine did this via helping to explain a new piece of technology to approximately 1000 people over the course of about a month – in groups of 10-15 each. Zero stage fright feels about presenting after that…

On Getting Nervous

Nerves (the gigantic wall of feelings that hits right when you’re about to get onstage), they happen sometimes. That’s…actually the best advice we have on the subject – they happen. Don’t feel like nerves are a problem or a sign that you’re doing something wrong. Second best advice: let the nervousness and fear and excitement flow through you – and let the excitement stay and fill your heart – what you’re about to talk about is AWESOME! and you’re excited. That’s really good.

Nerves: the gigantic wall of feelings that hits right when you’re about to get on stage

Worry Zone: long-lasting jitters and fears about your talk – usually related to having to do it perfectly or something terrible will happen!

Also, watch out for the Worry Zone – a longer lasting set of jitters and fear about your talk – usually related to having to do it perfectly. This is a control-based fear. You want to be safe in some way by giving a great talk.

Bad news: giving a great talk won’t make you safe.

Good news: you can’t make yourself any safer than you already are. You were made to give this talk. Go give it. Our best advice is, you don’t have to do it perfectly, instead you should…

…Be You and Have Fun

We do not present quite how “normal” people present – if we assume that “normal” is very formal (…rhyme unintentional). This is sort of on purpose, and sort of not – if we were formal people, then presenting in a formal manner would make a ton of sense. But…we’re not. Being comfortable presenting (hence not prepping to the point of living in the Worry Zone) means that your soul will come through – and that can be scary, to allow a room full of people to see pieces of who you really are. It’s also very effective – this is especially true if you genuinely love the things you’re talking about.

Genuinely loving your content and allowing that to come through (whatever that looks like) means that some other things are also clear to the audience – that you’re sure about what you’re talking about, and that it’s a thing worth caring about and listening to. It also typically means that if someone throws a curveball from the audience, you won’t be as rattled. And it means that it gets to be fun. You get to talk about things you love to people! As we above said, that’s awesome! And if it’s not awesome, it’s entirely possible that presentations are not a great way for you to communicate – we’ve both had several conversations with people who think we’re completely nuts for loving to present. That’s cool too, being you and having fun can apply to literally anything you do – and it’s always good advice.

Being you and having fun can apply to literally anything you do – and it’s always good advice.

Some Extra Tips re: Pair Presentations

Creating and giving presentations is a lot of work. There are a few different patterns we’ve seen of how people sometimes split up that load by pair presenting:

Just the content
Content + presentation
Just the presentation

There are a few people we’ve run into who work on just the generation of content together – discussing ideas, getting ideas onto “paper,” editing and connecting dots of ideas. There are also situations where people might need to present together on content that they didn’t create together – maybe only one of them created it, or maybe neither did. Marketing material is often like this. Then there’s our plan – we create content together and present together if at all possible (it isn’t sometimes for work stuff, most of the rest of the time it is, yay!).

Leslie and Ron, our most frequently used presentation avatars.

None of it’s particularly easy if you don’t have a solid relationship with the other person/people. Collaboration on material is hard enough, but collaboration on an actual presentation is very tricky. We’ve picked up some tricks along the way, like using avatars to know when to switch who is driving the presentation – but mostly we know each other really well, we’ve discussed the things that we present at very great length, and we’ve long established things like, “yes please interrupt me when I forget to make a point.” So…tl;dr, if you want to present with a partner or a group, communication as part of your prep is extremely important. Also really liking the other person/people, and caring roughly the same amount about the topic.

We hope our experience and learned tips are useful to you. If you’re called to say words to a lot of people about something you’re passionate about, that’s awesome! Go do that thing!

If you have any other tips, email us or drop them in the comments, below!

Tech Leader Summit and ArchConf 2019

by Laine and Josh | Community, Leadership, Organizations, People, Technology

January 8, 2020

Before we start the actual post, today is the blog’s 1st birthday! <3 (Our first post.) Thanks to anyone who has been reading, or anyone who will read in the future. We blog because we love it, and we appreciate…well, everything related to it.

Last month, we spoke at Tech Leader Summit and ArchConf, which are conferences from the No Fluff Just Stuff tour. We also spoke this summer at UberConf, which is on the same tour. We had an AMAZING time, and we wanted to record and share some of it for posterity.

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The Human Scar of Exile

by Josh and Laine | Community, God, People

December 31, 2019

In the course of getting ourselves kicked out of church we started to see a pattern of behavior. We referenced it briefly in the All the Problems of the World… post, where we said:

We’ve written about, and will write more about, this topic – but the summary is, people think that if someone near them is doing behavior X, it will cause them pain. They think that if someone near them is misbehaving according to God, then they will feel pain from God as a result.

This is an old, old cultural scar. Homophobia, racism, legalism, basically all kinds of hatred are examples of this. It’s a lie that people believe and respond to: “I need to control you, or something bad will happen to me. I need you to be what I think God wants, or we won’t be safe.”

We’ve gone over and over the ground of how people try to keep themselves safe. We even know part of why people do this – because of the one fear, the fear of being alone because of who you truly are. We do crazy, damaging things trying to keep ourselves and our relationships safe – and we do crazy, damaging things trying to make the people around us into our definition of safe as a result.

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Children’s Faith and Houses of Cards

by Laine and Josh | Community, People

December 10, 2019

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”

He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.” (Matthew 18:1-5)

Children

We were talking about this Bible verse, because we do that thanks to the magic of an app that spits out a Bible verse every day. Laine mentioned how this seemed legit, because children really are interesting and uncommon in their faith.

“That’s why kids are curious, and why they accept new information so easily. They don’t assume they’re right about…much.”
– Laine

And…children are pretty flexible. It’s true. They’re very sure about the world, but also they approach it knowing that they probably don’t understand it. Their only job is to learn, for at least the first 14-16 years. And since they change almost daily, they learn how to adapt simply in order to…wake up every day. This has the effect of them being very sure about the world – until something tells them to change.

Adults

“Adults go all hear-no-evil because their houses of cards are confused by new input.”
– Laine again

Adults build houses of cards based on the things they think keep them safe. Layer upon layer of flimsy, and foundations built on shifting sand. These houses of cards, despite being wobbly by nature, are rigid. They have to be held perfectly still, because if you even breathe too hard on a house of cards…the whole thing topples. So adults hold their breath, and they by and large tread lightly. People with house-of-cards models hate hearing things that disagree with their view of the world – which is unfortunate, because reality, and God, very often throw new information at us. Often this information is beautiful, if only we can manage to avoid running away from it long enough to allow it in.

God is going to force change, and growth. Not a single one of us is perfect or fully formed, and we do stupid things that hurt ourselves in the name of self-protection. God protects us from ourselves, and that means sometimes we have to change even if we don’t want to – and that means that not a single one of us can actually stay perfectly still or hold our breath for any length of time.

We can fight against the wind or we can go where it takes us – but either way, a house of cards won’t survive.

Conflict, too, is necessary for change and growth. It’s necessary for the growth of each of us, and it’s also necessary for the growth of the relationships we try to stumble through while we lug our baggage along behind us. The houses of cards that represent our relationships are even more elaborate – and even more fragile.

Adapt

At some point, children grow up. They start to get their own scars and their own baggage, and they start building models of reality that don’t hurt as much as actual reality. The begin to build the house of cards, and they lose all of the flex that makes them able to have the kind of faith that can bend without collapsing at the slightest breeze.

You gotta’ keep some flex in your models.

Some things are certain. But really, “certain” just means it takes a whole lot to convince someone otherwise. God, for example, exists. He exists, and he is good, and he cares about each of us individually. That’s certain. But…actually, that just means that we’re really really sure, because there’s a lot of evidence and we’ve been over that ground a lot.

Other things, like “OpenShift is the best Kubernetes platform,” eh. Maybe we should be open to new information about that, and maybe not being certain about it would be beneficial. Maybe it’s the best for some people, or even most people – and maybe it doesn’t work at all sometimes.

You have to have a foundation that’s built on things that are real – not cards precariously stacked. And…on top of that foundation, you gotta’ keep some flex in your models. You gotta’ be open to being wrong. You have to allow for wind, and breath, and change. The alternative is ignoring reality, and ignoring God, and that’s a dangerous path to go down.

Master Data Management Rant

by Josh | Processes, Technology

December 3, 2019

Foreword by Laine:

If you’ll recall our post entitled, Go: a Grumpy Old Developer’s Review, you might remember that sometimes Josh goes on legitimately amazing rants about technology and architecture. HERE IS ONE, YOU ARE ALL WELCOME.

What is Master Data Management?

“Master data management (MDM) is a method used to define and manage the critical data of an organization to provide, with data integration, a single point of reference.”

In other words, MDM tries to create a standard database schema loaded with uniform, processed, “cleaned” data. The data is easy to query, analyze, and use for all application operations. Sounds great!

Most business have a lot of data – and if they could access that data accurately, reliably, and rapidly, it would give them a lot of insight into what their world looks like and how it’s changing. They could unify their understanding of themselves, their customers, and their partners, and become more agile (agile as in, “able to change directions quickly in response to changing conditions,” not Agile as in the development methodology).

MDM is sold as a silver bullet that will enable this master view of data, this easy querying, and this agility. But I haven’t seen that actually happen very often.

MDM Kills Agility

MDM is a tool of consistency – and consistency forces things to exist in specific ways. The real problem with MDM is then reflected when you consider that the data of a business is like the mind of the business. Imagine if your mind could no longer consider something to be valid input unless it had seen it before – as in, you could understand when you found a new variety of orange, but if you had never seen a starfruit before, you literally could not comprehend it. As one of my colleagues said,

“Building a gold data model is like nailing jello to a tree.”

MDM in its traditional, monolith definition, kills agility. Basically, it’s building a perfect utopia in which all changes have to be agreed on by everyone, and no one can move in until it’s perfect, and then no one can change ever again. Our job as technologists is not to stagnate – it’s to “deliver business value at the speed of business” (Gitlab). Businesses need to move fast, and to do that they must be able to adapt – and if IT systems don’t adapt, then IT systems slow the business down.

I’ve come across multi-year MDM projects full of ETL and data standardization meetings – and the business is finding data points that matter faster than they can be standardized. An MDM initiative that can’t move as fast as every other part of the business just slows it down, eats resources, and eventual dies a dusty death of forgottenness.

A Possible Solution: Jump-Start with a Purchased Model!

Often companies will sell a partial model of the business’s data that can be adopted more rapidly, which is typically “industry-standard” data – with claims that this will speed time to market for a MDM system. But it doesn’t.

Every organization sees the world slightly differently. This is a good thing. Individual divisions and teams within each organization will also each see the world differently. These different views mean different schemas.

Trying to fit everyone into one data model is like trying to make everyone speak exactly the same English, with no slang, no variations in tone or phrasing, and definitely no new words, connections, or ideas.

The perspective of a business, or any group, changes as the group learns and grows. Locking yourself into an old perception, or attempting to standardize via a process that takes years, is intentionally slowing down your business’s rate of adaptation and growth.

Also, it sets you up for years of arguments between teams that their view of the data – and by extension the world – is correct.

A Recommendation: Agility in Data Access Models, Not Data Storage Models

The need to have some kind of standardization so that a business’s data is useful is real. What we have seen work is more of a blended approach: spend 20% of the effort on making the data sane, and 80% of the effort on providing clear, accurate, scalable data access via APIs, in-memory databases, and occasionally Operational Data Stores (ODS). You can click on the links to learn more about each of those tools/approaches, but the basic idea is to leave the data where it is, in the format that makes sense for the team in charge of it, but provides access and views that make the data usable.

Leave the data where it is, in the format that makes sense for the team in charge of it, but provides access and views that make the data usable.

Microservices with versioned API’s, backed by legacy databases, implemented via request/response or pub/sub application communication models, are the easiest application EVAR. It’s simple to spin them up and scale them using containers and OpenShift. Using this approach, you can provide multiple data views of the data, and add more as new connections and ways of thinking appear.

If you need to do your own analytics or heavy-duty data processing/lifting, you can use a temporary or semi-permanent (but not the source of truth) data store such as an in-memory database or an ODS. Again, these are faster to set up and and more importantly faster to change than a legacy system of record, and they provide a nice balance between the speed of APIs and the performance of an enterprise database.

Conclusion: MDMs Generally Suck (Relative to Alternatives)

I would love to be wrong. I’d love to hear some new innovation that makes MDM make sense. But I’ve seen too many MDM initiatives rust out and die, and I’ve seen way too many API projects succeed wildly.

Don’t MDM, API.