the unknown tools

I am constantly surprising myself, especially when I find tools in my toolbox I didn’t know I had.

I just spent over an hour on the phone with my mother after spending 2+ days doing in-home tech support.  I’m not sure which one of us exhibited more patience during this process.  She keeps saying she wants things to happen NOW, and hates waiting.  Ultimately, that is what I am trying to do for her.  While she is convinced I’m trying to drive her to an early grave, I am really trying to make her technology experience more “one click does it all”.

I’ve mentioned before that I teach kindergarten (figuratively, not literally) and in my day job, I create all sorts of job-aids and tutorials.  I have begrudgingly come to the realization my brain works differently than your brain, or her brain, or my students brains.  As such, I have to speak a little differently, a little slower, come up with analogies that are a little easier to grasp, and make different associations.  Sometimes these come to me like a flash.  I’m always surprised and delighted when it happens, and it works.

We had a little family issue this week and I surprised myself with how I was able to just roll with it, quietly move things in the direction I wanted it to go, and it ended without a huge row.  We all have our buttons, and I know how to push my mothers.  My sister has spent 60 years mastering how to push our mother’s buttons.  My mother falls into the trap every time.  Having me there, I was able to sidestep the traps.

As we age, hopefully we learn something from all that life throws at us.  I have never been very patient, and I have never been very understanding of those whose thought processes are vastly different from mine.  Living in Oregon for the last 25 years, I was surrounded by like minded folks, who were technologically adept, and socially left.  Being back in the south… Every one of my buttons is being pushed on a daily basis.  I just go back to my students, and think about how I deal with them.  I do this professionally every day.  I can certainly apply this to my life and personal relationships.

This week has been Yom Kippur, and there was a paragraph in the service that really spoke to me:

Forgiven the past, renewed for tomorrow
May we go forth with rejoicing,
To a year of great goodness.

What happened in the past is the past.  This new year will be a good year.  All my tools are tucked in my tool belt and ready to be accessed at any time.

Now, I’m giving y’all one last chance to tell me how you want to help my dating process.  Please click on your vote below and on Monday, I’ll be posting the results.