Month: August 2021

I’m a fan of Harvard Business Review. I also appreciate their slightly more hip take on that timeless classic they call Ascend. Earlier this week I was reading their email about emails. It was good. Scroll to the bottom and you’ll find a bit titled ‘The Fun Stuff.’ It linked to a blog with a lot of drawings about the ‘two kinds of people’ phenomenon. So I scrolled through it.

When I got to the one about the straight blinds and the crooked blinds on page 3, I was hooked. So. True.

In full transparency, I’m a straight blinds guy. For those of you who know me, this probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise. K is a crooked blinds gal. Meaning, it doesn’t seem to bother her if she comes down in the morning and, after raising the blinds around the house, one or two are left crooked. Me, it does. So I fix them.

Please enjoy your own scrolling until you find the one that’s you.

We were on our way home from the ocean last week when a Subaru with a rooftop tent passed us going over Tiger Mountain. I remember thinking as it did, ‘I’ve never been jealous of rooftop tents.’ They seem like they’d be a hassle, they’re a big box on top of a car, and in the grand ol’ Pacific Northwest they’d quickly become mold traps. Granted I’ve never used one like this once-skeptical Adventure Journal author has done. Maybe they’re awesome. To each their own, of course.

What I was jealous of were all those folks with campervans. So last summer, after months of looking, K and I scored an old tile van which we spent a few months of Type II fun building that thing into our camper. We roll up somewhere and boom! Instant camp.

This got me thinking though as we chugged through the mountains that day. What else had I been jealous of and how has it played out? Case in point: a few years ago as part of the Outdoor Industry Association’s leadership program, I was jealous of the guy putting on our big retreat. That would be really cool, I told myself. So on the airplane home from that event, I hatched a plan that eventually became Sendline.

Rightly so, I realize jealousy can have a bad rap. It can also lead to a lot of unproductive feelings. That day last week however I was thinking of how it’s motivated me (so maybe ‘admire’ is a better word, but I’m sticking with jealous). I’m going to give it some more thought. Also, I’ll be on the lookout for that feeling again to see how it can kick my butt into doing something else cool.

With my parents in town, some conversations with my mom circled around to leadership-y stuff. She’s a bit of a leadership geek, too. At one point we talked about feedback. Way back when I was a kid, she was likely the one who introduced me to the concept: ‘You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.’

It was as true when I was a kid as it was in the fifteenth century when John Lydgate supposedly coined it as it is still. I remind myself of this from time to time, like I remind myself what really matters is just one person.

During our conversation, my mom shared a funny story. Following her adult education workshops, she always asked a few questions. Once she received a lot of the same feedback: ‘Where was the chocolate?’ Taking that to heart and not wanting to deprive the next group of chocolate, she made sure there was plenty on hand. The feedback she got following that one? ‘Where was the dark chocolate?’

ps… this response from Steve Jobs to some feedback begins with this idea and it has long-inspired me for his maybe rare showing of humility and vulnerability…

This is going to be short because my parents are visiting from Missouri. I haven’t seen them in just over two years so it’s been good to catch up.

I’ll start with some quick context for this very random story. For Father’s Day this year, K surprised me with a hook and ring toss game. She thought it’d make a good conversation starter for our yard. I finally got it hung up this week with my dad.

I’ve talked about my dad before, about him being a meteorologist, his love for forecasting weather and not wanting to be a manager. After getting the game set up, we played it together. Later that afternoon, he told me how I could use it as a weather station. At first I thought he was being serious. ’If it’s wet, it’s raining,’ he started off explaining. ‘If it has snow on it, it’s snowing. If you can’t see it, it’s foggy.’ He smiled and then I got it.

Once a meteorologist who tells meteorologic jokes, always a meteorologist who tells meteorologic jokes I guess. My dad is awesome.