Category: Life

Jan 01

My 3 Words For 2016

2016threewordsAs has been my tradition for a while now, I like to start off on January 1 writing about my "three words" that represent my aspirations for the year ahead. (See my 2015 three words and also earlier years.)

So here we go for 2016...

STRATEGY

I've found myself quite "busy" this past year, but the question is whether I've been "busy" with the right things. And more to the point - has there been a reason for some of the things I've been doing.

Not that you absolutely NEED a reason for everything... but we live in an age of distraction, and if we aren't careful it's easy to find that we've frittered away time that we could have spent otherwise.

In 2016 I want to think a bit more strategically about the various activities I'm involved in. To make conscious choices about what I'm doing - and for whom - and why.

And to have a bit more of a plan in some cases.

Some common phrases come to mind:

  • Connect the dots.
  • Think of the big picture.
  • Do fewer things better.
  • Less is more.

In some ways this is perhaps a continuation of, or a refinement of, the "Essentials" that I talked about in 2015.

The point is that I want to think and act a bit more strategically this year.

HEALTH

In the chaos of 2015, I let my health slip down in my list of priorities. I haven't been making the best choices in terms of eating or exercise. Sadly, I've gained back 25 of the pounds I lost over the past few years. I didn't run a single race in 2015 - and in fact ran a measly 213 miles over the entire year... not even running at all in the entire month of December, and only a pathetic 6 or 7 miles in both October and November. There are other examples.

I need to change this.

I need to put a priority back on taking care of my health. Because if I don't do it, who will? And I want to be around in the long term for my wife and kids.

REFLECTION

I want to make time this year for more reflection. Caught up in the maelstrom of being "busy", I haven't been taking the time to...

Pause.

Think.

Contemplate.

Reflect.

It's hard to carve out that time to just think about things... to think about how all the dots are connected.

But we need to do so... or at least *I* feel the need to do so.

This time of reflection feeds back into the "strategy" word above... and indeed into the "health" word as some of that reflection can happen while, say, running.

These are my aspirations for 2016... what are yours?

P.S. There is, of course, a fourth word that will consume a great part of 2016 for me... CURLING! Particularly given that my 13-year-old daughter will now be going to the 2016 USA Curling Junior Women's National Championships in two weeks in Minnesota...

An audio version of this post is available:

Oct 28

Putting One Foot In Front Of The Other… And Walking On…

FootprintsToday was one of those days. You know the type I'm talking about.

When the to-do list seems to just keep going and going and going...

When for every one thing you check off, it seems like three more get added...

For every blog post I published or document I created, there was another one that I was reminded that wasn’t done yet.  The email messages came in with new projects and things to add to the list. An IM message reminds me that there was another project still lurking out in the background that needs finishing up.  Another message bringing a request from someone to know when I’ll finally have a chance to do something I should have done four months ago…  the finance department pings me wondering when I’ll finally get to doing expenses…  a calendar reminds me that I still need to book the flights for an upcoming trip… 

The hits kept on coming and coming...

Not just in my work life, but also in my personal life… the guilt of not being able to meet with someone to help on a project that I helped start, but then haven’t been able to do much more with… drama within organizations with which I am involved…  chaos in the lives of those around me who I love dearly… a reminder at dinner time that I need to find substitutes for the curling game I’m not going to be able to play in on Saturday… the lingering feeling that I’m dropping the ball on something else… and then the parent evening tonight… the unfinished email messages...

It was one of those days… 

And then when I take a “break” to look in on social media, I find that world is exploding with amazing news all day today!  So many things I want to write about… to podcast about… heck, just to READ about… 

And the frustration that there are some big pieces of writing that I want to do.  There are things happening all around us that I can see - dancing right in front of me - that I know that I can pull together and connect the dots in ways that would help these things make sense to other people.  The frustration that I know I could help people understand. 

But yet the pieces sit there… dancing just out of range… taunting me… beckoning… calling me to pull them together and make them whole… 

It was one of those days… 

And as the end of the day approaches there is a sense of frenetic activity… of an unsustainable pace… of burning too many candles at too many ends… of ropes fraying… of the need to do fewer things better… of the need to be more present… 

And I must pause...

… and remind myself that sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is to simply...

… breathe.

To take that moment to pause amidst the chaos… to have a moment in the madness… 

...

...

and then to pick yourself up...

put one foot in front of the other… 

...

… and walk on.

Mar 31

Never Give Up

Curling final 770

Never. Give. Up.

I was vividly reminded of that lesson last night in the championship game of the Men's Curling League at the Petersham Curling Club where I play. Our team, which had played extremely well together all year, had made it through the playoffs to be in the final championship game against another excellent team.

This was it. The end of the long curling season and a chance to have our names inscribed on the league trophy at the club.

After 5 of the 8 ends (think "innings" in baseball or "periods" in hockey), both teams were tied. Then the other team scored 2 points in the 6th end. Then they stole 1 point in the 7th. So we were going into the final 8th end three points down with a score of 7-4.

We thought we were doomed. It was highly unlikely that there was any way out. Scoring 3 points to tie was going to be extremely difficult based on how well the other team was playing.

In my mind, I had mostly given up.

But part of why I enjoy the sport of curling is the degree of skill it takes... but also the unpredictability of what can happen. A piece of lint on the ice could cause a rock to go off in an unplanned direction. A change in humidity can make the ice slower or faster than it was just a few minutes ago. The skip can call the sweepers on too early or too late and have the rock end differently than planned. The person throwing the rock can throw it wrong... missing the line he/she is supposed to hit or throwing it too hard or too light.

So many variables.

The 8th end began as you would expect. The other team fired their first rock through the rings... just got it out of there. They were up by 3 points - all they wanted to do was knock rocks out and make sure we couldn't score any points.

But then things happened. We made some good shots. They missed a couple of shots. We missed some shots. They made some good shots... the game went on.

But in the end we came down to the final stone of the opposing skip with 4 of our stones sitting in the rings. You can see a photo above that I took of the way it was set up. Our skip had his final stone to throw, too, but we expected the opposing skip to simply come down and sit on our rock that was in the blue "four-foot" ring. Either that or hit our rock out and roll over behind the other rocks where it would have been extremely difficult to get to his rock. It was a comparatively "easy" shot and the opposing skip had made shots like this all the time.

Looking at it I thought we were done.

But... the other skip's final stone was too light! Even with the frantic sweeping of the team the rock didn't make it down to the rings and instead hit the rocks in the front.

Unbelievably... we had just scored 4 points to win!!!

Our skip didn't even have to throw his final rock.

We sat there with our mouths open... uncomprehending at first.

And THEN we celebrated!

Never. Give. Up!

An audio commentary is also available:

Jan 01

My Four Words For 2015

2015 four words 300pxAs I have done for the past several years now, I like to start off on January 1 with a post about a few "words" that represent aspirations I have for the year. As I did last year for 2014, I'm going to write about four words for 2015, as compared to the three words I wrote about in 2013, 2012, 2011 and 2010. And while I've been doing this for my own reasons, I should credit Chris Brogan for starting the idea of writing in this way publicly many years ago. So here is my current thinking for 2015...

ESSENTIALS

Over the past six months or so I've been giving a great amount of thought to what exactly I want to be doing - in many different aspects of my life. Part of that came about as part of looking at my role within the Internet Society and thinking about what makes the most sense for my particular skills and interests. But perhaps a larger part came about in some of the reading and discussions my wife and I have been having around what many call "minimalism" or variations on that theme. Basically... looking at how to do fewer things better. We only have so many hours in the day and we choose how we are going to spend those hours... and we choose what we give our attention to. My wife's ongoing experience with cancer treatments has certainly changed our overall perspective and made us think about what is most important to us.

This year I want to continue that effort into distilling things down to what are really the "essentials" in my life upon which I wish to focus. This may mean focusing more and putting aside some side projects... or admitting that some project ideas may just never happen - and that's okay.

To go back to that wonderful quote from the poet Mary Oliver:

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

And even more so... what will I do - or not do - in pursuit of that?

BOOKS

Given that my last book was published four years ago back in 2011, I do feel a bit of a desire to have another book come out some time soon. An obvious candidate is to pitch O'Reilly on doing a Second Edition of Migrating Applications to IPv6 given that a lot has changed in four years and that there is much more that can be said about IPv6 based on the deployment experience to date. I also have several ideas for books in the telephony/telecom/VoIP space.

I also have several ideas for books outside the pure technology space... more in the public relations / marketing / social media space. And there are some other ideas I have floating around my head...

Ideas for books are easy... it's making the time to create the book that is the challenge! I'd like to see what I can do in 2015 to at least get some book project underway.

HEALTH

"Health" was actually one of my three words back in 2010 and as I noted in my 2011 post I went far in 2010 dropping 45 pounds and starting to get into running. Last year "running" was one of my words and I'm now pretty confident that running is part of my lifestyle and just part of what I do.

But... now this year I need to focus a bit broader than just running. It's been a while since I've had a physical and there are some other health issues I'd like to address. It's time to do a bit more to ensure I'm around for the long term.

CURLING

This is not so much an aspiration as an admission that this year may more heavily involve the sport of curling that I enjoy so much. There are two aspects here. First, my soon-to-be-13-year-old daughter enjoys curling and shows some interest in doing more competitively. IF she does that (and it's still an "if"), that will set us on a potential path of bonspiels (tournaments) and camps that may set the tone for much of our family activity for the year. We'll see. Second, I very much want to see this be the year when we start making some headway with starting up the Monadnock Curling Club and looking at bringing the sport of curling to our region of New Hampshire.

That's what I'm thinking about right now for this year... I have a sense that 2015 could be a big year on a number of different fronts... we'll have to see how it turns out.

Meanwhile... Happy New Year! May 2015 be a great year for you!

An audio version of this post is available:

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

Dec 31

Revisiting My Four Word for 2014 – How Did I Do?

2014fourwordsOn this final day of 2014, I thought I should reflect back on my "four words" for 2014. They were:

  • Running
  • Religion
  • Audio
  • Strategy

How did I do? Let's take them one by one...

RUNNING

The good news is that I did make running more a regular part of my life. By adding up the monthly totals in my iPhone app I see that I ran over 288 miles this year. It was spotty, though. I only ran 6.2 miles in September yet I ran over 56 miles in July! I finished the year doing 26 miles in December... which works out to be about 6 miles a week. Good... but not great. Next year I'll aim to do better.

It was also a strange year in that I ran only one race... and that was the short 1-mile "Pumpkin Mile" that was part of the Keene Pumpkin Festival and that I ran with my five-year-old daughter. For all the other races I wanted to do I either had a schedule conflict or in one case it rained harder than I really cared to race in.

My goal starting off 2014, though, was to get running more a part of my life... and I think I can safely say that I did that.

RELIGION

Back at the beginning of the year I wrote:

But you wouldn't know any of this from what I write and post online. There are thousands of blog posts online from me since 2000 and many thousand tweets/updates/posts on social media...

... but pretty much NONE of them say ANYTHING about religion.

There are a lot of reasons for WHY I have been silent about the religious side of my life in my online activity... and I'll write a post about that at some point (probably soon).

But I've realized that in being silent and hiding this aspect of myself I'm not really letting myself be truly whole.

So I'm going to start... I've been letting pieces of that side of me leak out into Facebook lately. THIS blog post is a huge step for me.

I'm not going to be "in your face" about religion or anything (that's not the UU way! ;-) ). But I'm going to stop hiding that side of me. I will treat it instead just as yet another facet of the complicated person that I am (and that we all are).

We'll see... this will, in all honesty, be a bit challenging for me... but is an area I'd like to grow personally.

This has been hard for me, but I have started to be more open about this side of myself. For instance, I participated in a panel that was recorded on video distributed on YouTube where I talked about our church and my involvement in the "community breakfasts" that we do for the homeless each morning during the winter months. I also shared on Facebook and social networks when I was giving a sermon at our church in late October on the subject of "Facebook and Fox News: Escaping the Echo Chambers of Affirmation". I actually recorded that sermon but have yet to put it online... perhaps in 2015.

I also shared out more links from our church's web site and social media feeds into my own feeds... which was a big step for me.

Baby steps... but at least I'm no longer hiding my this part of me. We'll see where this goes from here.

AUDIO

Unfortunately this area remained a bit of an "aspiration" this year. I had hoped to do more with audio this year. Now I did do more with my "The Dan York Report (TDYR)" podcast... producing over 155 of the short episodes. I also didn't miss a single week of For Immediate Release (FIR) reports, producing 52 of those reports. I also started using several new applications on my iPhone to more rapidly produce podcasts

BUT...

... I'd had aspirations to do more. Here's how I wound up with what I had hoped to do:

We'll see if this gets better in 2015. I thoroughly enjoy audio and would like to get back to doing more!

STRATEGY

I wrote in January:

Finally, there is an exquisite irony to me that while my job title at the Internet Society is "Senior Content Strategist", my own personal content online is severely lacking a strategy. I am inconsistently writing across 8 or 9 different places online - and I'm adding more sites like the Monadnock Curling Club... and there are a few other projects in the works.

Yes, this is a bit of a case of the proverbial "cobbler's shoes", but in 2014 I'd like to pull some of this together a bit more and have a bit more discipline about what I'm doing with all my online content. I'm at least aggregating my online content at my danyork.me site, but this year I want to do more with getting more consistent with the creation of content.

Alas... still a work in progress...

So there I was for 2014... good progress with two of my words... less so with the other two. How did your year work out?

An audio version of this post is available on in my "The Dan York Report" podcast:

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

Dec 24

Ceremonies of Light and Dark

What I so love about this time of darkness in the northern hemisphere is all the "ceremonies of light and dark". Because it is so dark, we seek out times to celebrate the light.

To drive back the darkness.

To celebrate with friends and family.

To embrace the wonder of the flame.

To shine out as a beacon of love and hope.

And there are so many different ceremonies of so many different religions and faith traditions:

- the advent candles and candlelight services of Christian churches, along with the Christmas trees.
- the menorahs of Judaism.
- candles and fires of earth-centered faiths.

... and, of course, all the lighting of our home decorations....

I enjoy the candles the best... the simple flames, burning as they do.

This is one of my favorite parts of the season.... the light in the darkness.

A time of hope... for the light that is yet to come.

Ceremonies of Light and Dark

Dec 14

Video: The Keene Interfaith Community Breakfasts

One of the great changes in my life over the past year has been helping out at the community breakfasts for the homeless that happen now each winter weekday morning at our church in Keene, NH. While they are held in our church building, the teams of volunteers who staff the breakfasts also come from several other churches in our community. (In fact, we're looking for one more church or other community group to step forward and help on the one remaining day that needs coverage.)

It's been quite an eye-opening experience for my wife and I, both in terms of learning about the quantity of people in our region who are homeless... but also in hearing some of the stories and knowing that while often it is very definitely choices that get people into these situations, sometimes it is instead circumstances - job losses, medical expenses, family issues - and that the line between those who have and those who have not can be very thin and fragile.

Recently a local community TV show recorded an episode with several of us who have been involved with the community breakfasts. I represented our church and spoke about some of the changes that being involved has brought about with me and our family.

Give it a listen... and if you are in the Keene, NH, area and interested in helping, we're always looking for people to help during these cold winter months!

What are the "community" breakfasts that take place at the Keene UU Church (KUUC) during the winter months? How did they get started? How are they an example of interfaith service programs? And how can people get more involved? In this episode 501 of her show "My Karma Ran Over My Dogma", Rev. Sandra Whippie explores these topics and much more with a panel including:
  • Rev. Michael Hall, KUUC minister and member of the Interfaith Clergy Association
  • Charlie Gibson, member of the Catholic churches in the Keene area
  • Dan York, member of the Keene Unitarian Universalist Church (KUUC)
  • Marcia Winters, member of the Keene United Church of Christ (UCC)

P.S. For the purpose of including an image for this post in the "carousel" at the top of the site, I'm including this screenshot of me talking:

Danyork interfaith breakfasts

Oct 31

Of Leaf Bags, Yankee Frugality And Our Disposable Society

Lawn bagsThere I was at the Keene dump at 7:00am this week about to drop off nine bags full of leaves that we'd raked up in our lawn. (The down side of all that beautiful foliage we enjoy!) I backed my Subaru Baja up to the massive pile of leaves and got out to start dumping my bags of leaves into the pile with all the other ones.

As I did so, I noticed a guy with a pickup truck about 20 feet away who was meticulously folding up the now empty paper bags that he had obviously used to bring leaves to the dump.

We gave the silent nods of acknowledgement that people often do at the dump... and then curiosity got the better of me and I asked "so do you re-use your bags?"

"Oh, sure! I usually get a good three years out of them," he said.

I nodded... and we both continued our separate work. But what blew my mind at that moment was simply this:

I had never considered re-using the paper leaf bags!

They were just the things you put leaves in and then threw out at the dump. Nothing more than that.

My package of 5 bags cost me $3.29 at my local hardware store. I bought two packages and so my investment thus far was a bit under $7. ($6.58 if we're being precise.) I was figuring I would probably need another set of bags to finish out the season and so I'd buy another set soon.

$10

In my mind just "the cost of doing business" and living in New England. Since the drop-off of leaves is free at our city dump, that $10 is my cost for the season, plus of course the bit of gas to drive out to the dump.

Not a big deal in the flow of our regular household budget.

But still...

$10 can buy other things. $10 could pay for the gas I need to drive back and forth. $10 could be donated to someone who might need it more.

It was a reminder to me that we live in such a consumeristic society where we just think about everything as being disposable. I was thinking about things as being disposable, particularly because these are just paper bags that will automatically degrade along with all of the leaves in them.

But why not re-use them?

By the time I unloaded my nine bags the guy had driven away and I was the only one at the pile. A couple of my bags were ripped from sticks and needed to be thrown in the pile... but I did save seven of them. Just emptied out the leaves and then folded them somewhat back together.

Now I don't have to buy that third set of bags - and if I'm careful I can probably not rip these bags and hold on to them for next year.

The only way out of being a "disposable" society is for us to think about ways that we can indeed reduce, re-use and recycle... and in this case I chose to re-use!

What about you? Do you re-use leaf bags? (If you are in the part of the world that needs them.) Or have you never bothered with leaf bags anyway and just used tarps and such?

You can hear an audio version of this post on SoundCloud:

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

Jan 01

My Four Words For 2014

2014fourwordsAs has been my custom now for the past few years, I like to start my writing off in a new year with a post about a few "words" that I intend to use as guides for the year. They aren't "resolutions" as much as they are areas of my personal life in which I aspire to be active this year. In previous years (2013, 2012, 2011, 2010) I've chosen three words, following a meme started by Chris Brogan many years ago.

This year, I found myself struggling to reduce four words down to three... and finally said "Hey, wait a minute, it's MY blog... if I want to have four words this year, I can! ;-)" And so... here is my list for 2014...

RUNNING

Those following my writing here have known that running became an important part of my life over the last 3.5 years. I even recorded an audio commentary last year (while running) about how important it is to me.

But I suffered a real crisis in confidence - and enjoyment - when I ran an extremely frustrating half-marathon in September. I never wrote a response to my post about preparing to run the half-marathon... rather than "third time is a charm", it was more "three strikes and you're out!"

I'll write some other time about that particular race and the resulting mental fallout, but suffice it to say that I've had a hard time getting back out there. I know intellectually that I just need to get back out there and do it... and in 2014 I intend to once again make running a core part of a healthy lifestyle!

And maybe I'll get to where I do try another half-marathon.... (but probably at a cooler time of year).

UPDATE: - I started off the year on a good note here by running a 5K on New Year's Day on our treadmill that we'd relocated to our basement. It was fine as long as I kept my head straight up so that it stays between the rafters!

RELIGION

You wouldn't know it from any of my online writing or any of my activities on social networks, but religion and spirituality are topics I'm incredibly passionate about and care deeply about. My father is a (now retired) Methodist minister, as was his father before him, and so I grew up deeply steeped in a progressive Christian church.

Yes, I am a "preacher's kid." :-)

When I was in my late teens and into college I had a severe falling out with the Methodist faith of my fathers and spent a significant amount of time searching for a religious community where I could belong. Like anything I do, I plunged in and dived deeply into reading, visiting churches, etc.... but never found anything until a random invitation from a friend some 20+ years ago introduced me to the world of Unitarian Universalism. Many years (and many UU churches) later, I'm president of the board of trustees of our local Keene UU Church and in fact led the worship service there last Sunday giving a sermon/message about the challenges of being open about religion in the age of Facebook.

But you wouldn't know any of this from what I write and post online. There are thousands of blog posts online from me since 2000 and many thousand tweets/updates/posts on social media...

... but pretty much NONE of them say ANYTHING about religion.

There are a lot of reasons for WHY I have been silent about the religious side of my life in my online activity... and I'll write a post about that at some point (probably soon).

But I've realized that in being silent and hiding this aspect of myself I'm not really letting myself be truly whole.

So I'm going to start... I've been letting pieces of that side of me leak out into Facebook lately. THIS blog post is a huge step for me.

I'm not going to be "in your face" about religion or anything (that's not the UU way! ;-) ). But I'm going to stop hiding that side of me. I will treat it instead just as yet another facet of the complicated person that I am (and that we all are).

We'll see... this will, in all honesty, be a bit challenging for me... but is an area I'd like to grow personally.

AUDIO

In a change from past years, I'm carrying a word over from the previous year. I did a great amount with audio in 2013, but in 2014 I intend to do more. I want to move forward with "FIR On Technology" and have a number of interviews in mind. I want to bring back Blue Box: The VoIP Security Podcast for some interviews... and I'm hoping to do more audio components in my daily work with the Internet Society Deploy360 Programme.

I'm excited... and "stay tuned" has never been more appropriate!

STRATEGY

Finally, there is an exquisite irony to me that while my job title at the Internet Society is "Senior Content Strategist", my own personal content online is severely lacking a strategy. I am inconsistently writing across 8 or 9 different places online - and I'm adding more sites like the Monadnock Curling Club... and there are a few other projects in the works.

Yes, this is a bit of a case of the proverbial "cobbler's shoes", but in 2014 I'd like to pull some of this together a bit more and have a bit more discipline about what I'm doing with all my online content. I'm at least aggregating my online content at my danyork.me site, but this year I want to do more with getting more consistent with the creation of content.

That's my list for 2014. What about you?

What are you going to do this year with your one wild and precious life?

An audio version of this post is available on in my "The Dan York Report" podcast:

Jun 18

With Our Every Action, We Create The Kind Of World We Want To Live In

PhotoIn our every moment... in our every action... we create the kind of world we want to live in. We can choose to build people up, and help build a world of optimism and hope. Or we can choose to tear people down, and help build a world of divisiveness and negativity.

Build people up - or tear people down. Your choice.

I have been reminded of this several times lately in choices I have been confronted with. One stark moment was a few weeks back when we here in New England were being hit by an incredibly unseasonably cold spell. On Facebook, my newsfeed was full of friends in the region complaining about having to turn their heat on, about how strange this was, etc.

Now, a couple of friends of mine in the region maintain a fairly constant stream of political posts on Facebook and have a rather hardline conservative view of the world. Their posts are full of extremely negative text and links about President Obama, Congress, Democrats, "liberals" and pretty much anyone else that doesn't fit their worldview... usually delivered with a VERY heavy degree of sarcasm and anger.

They take it to such extremes that I often do find it hard to read their posts, but I haven't "hidden" their feeds on Facebook primarily because I don't want to be stuck in a self-affirming "echo chamber" of views like mine. I keep their posts coming because I want to be reminded of the many divergent views we have... but that's a good topic for a different blog post...

Anyway, one of these friends wrote on Facebook about how unseasonably cold it was and just expressed his surprise at having to turn the heat on at this time of year.

My immediate reaction was to click in the comment field and start typing the snarky reply:

What? You haven't figured out how to blame Obama yet?

And then I paused before hitting return and publishing the comment.

Just a few days prior to this I'd been having a couple of different discussions with people about the divisiveness within our society, the lack of civility, the way that sides within our political world here in the US seem to be getting more deeply entrenched ... and just about how there seemed to be acrimony and negativity online.

And here I was... about to add to that.

I deleted the text and cancelled adding the comment.

Sure, the comment would have been "fun". I would have enjoyed leaving it. It would have been enjoyable to poke a little bit at the fact that yes, indeed, some things out there are beyond the control of even your bitterest enemies.

But was it really necessary?

Here was a friend writing about his current condition. No politics. No name-calling. Just stating how things were.

I could have been empathetic / compassionate and joined him in commenting on the strange weather. Or I could have done what I was about to do and get a dig in (where there wasn't one) and add to the divisiveness.

Build people up - or tear people down.

A day or so later I saw on Facebook a graphic circulating that attributed to Sufism three questions to think about before speaking or writing something:

1. Is it true?

2. Is it necessary?

3. Is it kind?

I haven't been able to find a definitive source for these questions - the closest seems to be these sources in a Daily Kos article - but regardless of origin, the questions are good ones. And in this particular case my proposed writing failed #2 and #3 in a big way.

The good news is that I did pause, reflect, and pulled back from that instant response.

That time.

Now, to be honest, in another recent case I did send an email response I probably shouldn't have and while it was true and perhaps necessary, it wasn't really kind.

Every moment. Every action.

Build people up... or tear people down.

The choice we make, in each moment, defines the kind of world we want to live in.

Your choice...

P.S. For those curious, the photo is one I took of "Eartha", a giant globe at the DeLorme headquarters store in Yarmouth, Maine.