Somewhere between return and relaunch

Ah yes, a blog post about blogging. who doesn’t love such a thing? Anyway, you may have noticed a complete lack of blog posts for the last little while. Perhaps you’ve wondered if I had been abducted by an Amish community and therefore was unable to communicate electronically. Or, you chocked it up to powerful bout of laziness and went about your business.

The answer is neither (though the Amish are an ever-present threat). Over the last few months, I’ve been trying to improve my ability to focus on my highest priority tasks. With the increasing number of commitments that are competing for my attention, I have to get better at picking my battles and letting the less important ones slide. And not to crush the spirits of the blog-fans out there, but this blog was one of the things I let slide. The prospect of forcing myself to blog on a schedule and post up content even when I didn’t have anything to say was unpalatable.

Despite the armada of interesting but unprofitable activities I take part in, my primary focus has been my next novel. It’s gone a little bit more slowly than I hoped, but I’m plucking away and I’ve finished the first third of it. And as I’ve been toiling away on  it, I’ve still been gathering up ideas and themes for a variety of blog posts. Some topics have been thrust upon me unwillingly, as my life takes an occasional unpleasant turn or two, but that’s the cost of doing business.

You may have also noticed that I’ve changed the name of the blog to something much less interesting.  There are too many topics I’d like to cover that have almost nothing to do with parenting, and it felt like I was misleading you, my wonderful audience. “I wanted to read about his kid and now he’s talking politics? WTF!” A classic bait’n’switch. So, by changing the blog into something a little more generic, I can write about the disparate bundle of ideas that clutter up my thinking without feeling like I’ve tricked you with false advertising.

Putting in the time

I think we’ve stumbled upon my a prospective best friend for my little dude, and as with every childhood bond of deep friendship, it’s primarily based on proximity. We’ve found another family living in our townhouse complex who have a son who is almost exactly the same age as Max, even born in the same month. This means that they’ll both be going into junior kindergarten at the same time, and they’ll both attend the school right around the corner. Like magic, my anxiety about the new school and the strangeness of it all has almost entirely vanished. He’s going to have a class buddy! Someone familiar who will accompany him as he embarks upon the journey into the mysteries of primary school.

And, to allay any concerns that their nearness to each other is the only commonality between them, please rest assured that they get along like peas and carrots. They are both smart, energetic, outgoing and creative dudes and they rally enjoy each others company. Of course, this means I now have double the amount of 4-year-old negotiating and pleading when I try to split the two of them up, but it’s a small price to pay.

It’s funny, I normally would feel very awkward about dropping in on a relative stranger, and a younger version of myself would have avoided doing that at all costs. But now, I can do it without really flinching, all because I want the relationship between Max and Shane to grow.

The trick to doing things you’re not comfortable with is having the right motivation. Before I found pursuits that I really believed in, it was impossible to challenge my own limitations and barriers. Now that there are a wealth of causes and goals that I’m chasing after, the intermediary steps I have to take to achieve those goals don’t seem insurmountable. As another example, I set up a meeting with a complete stranger, to talk about their involvement in my riding association. And not only did I set up the meeting, I was excited to go. For someone who used to describe himself as socially anxious, this is a surprising development (and a pretty cool one).

 

Social Media as a community response catalyst

Forgive the dry title-I’m attempting to steer away from comedic but uninformative post titles. Also, this post isn’t necessarily humourous.

I woke up this morning to the news of idiotic celebratory rioting, complete with overturned, burning vehicles. Our yearly celebration of mindless excess (St. Patrick’s day) brings out some terrible, anti-social behaviour in a handful of people (let’s call them “fools”).If there’s a large enough gathering, these fools will congregate and egg each other on until something tremendously stupid happens.

No matter what the excuse (St. Paddy’s Day, hockey game, tuition increase), the fools will see the opportunity to act out and they’ll jump on it. The crowd around them gives them a sense of invulnerability, as if the rules of society are fully suspended when a large enough group of people stand around together.

And, traditionally, they have had the protection of virtual anonymity. Committing crimes in front of a horde of drunken by-standers is fairly low-risk. The witnesses aren’t really in any shape to provide stellar eyewitness accounts, and they’re really in no position to stop the fools without putting themselves in danger.

But here’s a neat twist of the tale: through the instant availability of communication that social media gives us, the community at large can find out about the event as it happens, complete with evidentiary photos. Those by-standers, who have very little control over the chaos around them, have gained the ability to safely alert the community, and record the perpetrators as they commit their thuggish nonsense.That bubble of temporary immunity is shrinking at an incredible rate, as a few of the dumbest fools will find out this morning. While the fires were still burning, people were sending tweets and pictures of the fools to the police, as well as sending photos out to the community in the hopes of identifying the people in the picture.

It’s vitally important to remember that there is a clear line between good citizen involvement and vigilantism. The temptation to use this quickly gathered evidence to chase and harass the supposed perpetrators is strong, but we have to resist it. No matter how damning the ‘proof’ may appear, we still don’t have the authority or responsibility to punish the fools. Their transgressions against societal standards and the rule of law do not in any way give us license to do the same.