Category — fun

I came across this picture as I was sorting through some old photos on my computer:

This is me on my third birthday, enjoying some new crayons and a colouring book:

Me and my new crayons.

I’m 36 now, but I haven’t changed in some respects: I still find a great deal of fun in (supposedly) childish things: splashing through puddles, getting filthy, eating junk food for breakfast, reading fairy tales, etc. I also still like the few stuffed animals that I’ve managed to keep with me through well over 20 moves (and the few I’ve bought myself as an adult, too, but who could say no to plush toast?).

And while some of the things I loved as a kid are maybe not quite as fun  - especially the stomachaches from eating potato chips for breakfast – the one thing I still like just as much now as I did when I was little, are colouring books. The smell of Crayola crayons is a time machine for me; all I have to do is open the box, and I can see my younger self sprawled on on the floor, crayons spread out on the carpet, while I dedicated myself to the seriously fun business of colouring pictures.

I own a couple of colouring books now that are clearly aimed at children: simple pictures, lots of big spaces, and everything in ” jumbo” format (and they are Christmas-themed books, as they always seem the most fun to colour). And, because my fine motor skills have improved greatly since my third birthday, I’ve moved on from the jumbo crayons in the picture above, to a set of extremely nice Faber-Castell pencils, and beautiful stained glass colouring books.

These gorgeous books are printed by Dover Publications. The pictures are printed on translucent paper, with bold outlines, and can be coloured on both sides (or just one) and they look fantastic hanging in a window when you’re finished colouring them.

Recently, I indulged myself and bought one of the Christmas stained glass colouring books, and sat down with a glass of wine, and coloured this:

St. Nicholas with toys.

I feel safe in saying that the picture of St. Nicholas is a vast improvement upon anything I coloured as a three year old.

I love that there are companies like Dover Publications who make colouring books for adults; it means never having to give up being a kid – not entirely.

Not that I was going to anyway.

My friend Jen recently gave birth to a beautiful little girl whom she and her husband named Keagan; I’m now an honourary auntie!

I knit Keagan a blanket (my first attempt at anything larger than a dishcloth, and it actually looked pretty decent) and I wrote her a letter. I’d been toying with the idea of posting it and finally decided I would. So here it is, my letter to my lovely little niece:

Dear Keagan,

You’re finally here! We’ve all been waiting what seems like forever for you to come, and now that you’re here we all feel compelled to give you presents (and this will happen with great regularity because people LOVE to spoil cute babies).

My present is in the paper grocery bag along with your parent’s Supernatural CD. I would have wrapped it in something fancier, but Canada Post seems to know when you do things up nicely and then they drop your parcel in a puddle.

Anyway, my gift is a blanket that I knit for you. It’s pretty big considering how small you are. And given the heat wave going on in Ottawa, you probably won’t need it right away, but it will be handy come winter as a lap blanket or car-seat liner.

Here’s the really cool part about this blanket though – it’s not just some boring practical gift like socks or underwear, it’s actually a magical gift.

I know, I wouldn’t believe me either normally, but this really is a magical blanket.

Here are some of the uses I’ve discovered so far:

1. It makes a very comfortable flying carpet. That being said, if you’re off gallivanting in the Himalaya’s, do NOT let any yeti you meet use it. Yetis shed like mad and their hair is really hard to wash out – and this is a very washable flying carpet. Also, if some old guy in Cairo with a red hat and a cane offers you a bag of so-called ‘magic beans’ as trade for the carpet – say no and walk away. He’s a crafty one.
2. A very warm superhero cape. You’ll want to build up to really heroic feats though. Rescue a kitten in a tree a few times first and then maybe move on to rescuing folks in evil secret lairs. Lots of heroes think they can just start out big, but really, it’s like any other job – you start small, learn the ropes and work your way up. You’ll also find this cape great for rescuing people who got trapped in the Alps because they thought it would be fun to re-enact The Sound of Music. Try not to judge them too harshly, they can’t help being that stupid.
3. A small, but cozy, teddy bear fort. You’ll need two sticks and some string too, which I didn’t include because Canada Post won’t let me mail sticks. Something about them being a dirty safety hazard. Absolute rot in my opinion. If any of your bears start making lame excuses about needing to use the blanket to protect them from monsters, give them the blanket anyway; then follow them when they all sneak off to the annual Teddy Bear’s Picnic. You won’t taste better honey or sweets anywhere and the blanket does a fine job of keeping curious ants out of the custard.
4. DO NOT let your parents know about this one! This is secret information I’m about to divulge. Now, this blanket’s most useful magic is its ability to hide things. You’ll discover that hiding stuff under your bed when you’re told to “clean up that pig-pen you call a bedroom” will drive your parents absolutely wild. I could never see the big fuss either, I mean it’s all in one spot and easy to find right? Parents lose their minds over this sort of clear-headed logic

So, when you’re cleaning up, stuff everything under the bed as usual, and then put the blanket over the stuff. The blanket will create the illusion that there is nothing there – it’ll blend itself and all your things right into the floor.

That’s a very handy trick if you like collecting snakes, snails, rocks, cute toads or sticks and other things that destroy vacuum cleaners and make mothers shriek like old tea kettles. Trust me on this, I know.

That’s all I’ve discovered so far about the blanket, let me know if you find any new uses for it!

Welcome to the world little Firefly – I’ll try and visit just as soon as I possibly can.

Love,

Auntie R.

(and Uncle Joe too, though, he was no help at all with the knitting)

Yesterday, I bought Daniel H. Pink’s book Drive. I was inspired to read his work after watching the following video about why money is a poor motivator in the work place.

The whole book was an excellent read, but what really grabbed my attention is the concept of the Results-only Work Environment (ROWE).

Let’s compare and contrast:

Typical office workplace:

• Must be present during “core business hours”.
• Must fill in time sheets to record all work activities – sometimes in excruciating detail.
• Must attend all meetings – even if they will not be useful to your work in anyway.
• Socializing with other employees is not encouraged except for company sponsored “team building” exercises.
• Managerial “babysitters” whose purpose seems to be ensuring you’re there and working.
• Personal or professional development is encouraged so long as you do it outside of work hours.
• Flex-time is available, but it’s not really that flexible. You must still work a 40 hour week and account for all your time.
• Yearly evaluations from people you don’t work with on a daily basis to set meaningless, buzzword filled goals.

ROWE workplace:

• Must get the work done and it must be good quality – when and where you do it doesn’t matter.
• Meetings are for collaborating on or discussing something – no meetings just for the sake of having one.
• Employees can do great work on their own terms.
• Pays employees fairly so they can a) take care of themselves and their families properly without a lot of stress and b) stop worrying about who’s making what and get on with creating something great.

I know which model I prefer.

Does it work for all businesses – yes. Say you have a retail store, it will be open during what is considered “core business hours” generally speaking. It will also likely provide a service or product – and you can still let your employees direct themselves. People who aren’t comfortable on the cash register can work the floor and help people. Employees with a creative eye can set up enticing displays, the diplomats among them can deal with unhappy or difficult customers. And of course, money won’t be an issue with them at work, because you pay them fairly.

I wonder though if the old and stale model is still around because we keep dressing it up with fancy concepts. For instance, let’s look at software companies that use an Agile development process. Agile is meant to stop treating software development like a car-factory (the waterfall method) and let self-directed, cross-functional teams build software in short cycles. This allows for better collaboration and visibility and when done correctly, you have a small piece of working software that could potentially be released to a customer for immediate feedback.

Agile is a fantastic concept and a great environment to work in when done right; otherwise, it’s simply another buzzword used to make the company sound innovative and interesting to people who don’t work there. I have worked at such places – and after the initial excitement of forward momentum, there comes a screeching halt and a feeling of confused betrayal. It seemed like we were moving forward, things were changing, the old ways were being dismantled so new growth and ideas could flourish. But really, it was just a new coat of paint on the same old tired structure. Like lipstick on a pig is the phrase that comes to mind.

When something that should have been great turns out to be riddled with problems and mediocre at best  – people lose heart, become unhappy, demotivated and even angry. This is when people spend their lunch hours surfing Workopolis and cleaning up their resume. This is where employee turnover happens.

Daniel Pink points out that as children we are self-directed, curious and will work at something just for pleasure – but we lose this once we start school or working and we start doing things only because we have to and for the dubious reward of a gold star or a cash bonus at work. We become uninspired people merely collecting  rewards we won’t enjoy.

My goal is to get back to that curious and motivated state. I know I can’t be five again, but I wonder what things I might think up if I just explored what was around me, read more, wrote more and rather than feeling humiliated by my failures, used them as new opportunities.

We need to free ourselves from these schedules and time-sheets and silly carrot-and-stick systems and just engage with the work we’re doing – no matter what that work is. We need time and space to create new ideas and try new things – and this time and freedom could lead to truly innovative ideas that advance our thinking, our way of working and the work itself.

I’ve read all these concepts before and thought “What cheesy, new-agey sounding crap this all is.” But I was wrong to think that – not wrong because I know for a fact this approach won’t work for me, but wrong because I’ve never bothered to try it before.

That changes now.