“In all interactions, be either a teacher or a student.”

“In all interactions, be either a teacher or a student.” During my improv class last night, I was reminded of this mantra, which I adopted years ago during a period at work when I was really bored. Last night I was sitting there, a student, brand new, and still terrible at the thing we were practicing. It was uncomfortable, but not unpleasant. I was in the beginner’s mind. It was anything but boring.

Reflecting on that bad time at work, I remember endless meetings and busy work—nothing truly challenging, just overwhelming volume. Usually the answer to this type of challenge would be to prioritize what’s most important and ignore the rest. But I was also stuck in a rut, working on nothing very important. I didn’t want to leave, so needed to find something new to focus on. That search could fill only a small part of my day, so the rest was filled with picking up work no one else wanted to own.

So I was bored. Luckily, around that time a new leader joined us, who had an overt leadership style. He would spend as much time teaching others how to operate, think, decide, coach, as he would doing those things himself. He was always teaching.

And there I saw the answer to my boredom: like so many other problems, the best advice is the advice your grandma or grandpa may have given:

I fully endorse at least half of this sentiment.

Or to put it more encouragingly: Bored? Get curious.

If you feel like you’re on autopilot, ask how you could teach those around you to accomplish these things with as much mindless ease. If you feel others are wasting your time, find out why. Maybe they bored too, but no one has thought about whether this stuff is important.

Interestingly, practicing this mindset also helps you notice more viscerally when you’re the new, struggling, or confused person in the room. It makes you a better, more willing student. If every interaction is a teaching or learning moment, you can never be bored.

We’re on the road again.

We’re on the road again, skiing in Vail with our friends. It’s my ~13th annual trip with my friend Brian, who now lives here with his wife and son. One of my favorite traditions, and now Kelly joins. It’s the best.

Honeymoon Recap: The Horse Incident

In Bariloche Kelly captured these majestic horse photos.

The other horses all left. They know his deal.

Actually chasing me! He was like an eager puppy but 100x bigger.

Horses are **not** just Men Extenders. They have minds of their own.

Honeymoon Recap: Photos #3

Bariloche in the Lake District of Patagonia.

East face of Cerro Torre, taken the next day on our shorter hike.

Now down to the Calafate area, visiting the Perito Moreno Glacier.

Even when you’re next to it, it’s impossible to comprehend the size. There is just no sense of scale. These peaks are about five stories above the water. The electric blue piece in the water, which is closer to us than it looks, is at least the size of two school buses. Because of the color, you can tell this piece is super-dense ice, meaning it broke from the bottom and floated up.

~Five miles of glacier, slowly advancing over the mountain, fed by the Southern Patagonia Ice Field. The field is 6,000 square miles, larger than Connecticut.

All three faces, seen from the catwalks across the water. The part we walked on in the first picture is just barely visible at the far left. It’s the tiny peak you can see at the edge of the frame.

Back on the glacier side. Every four years or so, the ice reaches the opposite shore, and creates an ice bridge and a dam. This sign marks the highest level of the lake during the last the bridge in 2018. Apparently, glacier fanatics from all over the world booked stays for that whole summer, and bought tickets into the national park every single day, wanting to see the rupture. Then it broke overnight and no one saw it 😦 .

We saw Dune Part 2, and OMG.

We saw Dune Part 2, and OMG. I’ve never been in a theater so packed where the audience was so imperceptible. One of the things about going to the movies is you hear the people around you … crinkling wrappers, chewing popcorn, whispering to their date, whatever. Not Dune 2. For two hours and forty-six minutes straight, it felt like the entire audience was holding its breath as one, and digging its fingernails into the Music Box’s 90-year old armrests, not a muscle twitching in any of a couple hundred bodies. Go see in theaters, on the biggest screen you can. Look for a theater showing it in IMAX or 70MM. It’s worth it. To anyone in Chicago, I always recommend the Music Box.

Even more than the picture quality, the reason to see it in a special format like IMAX or 70MM is the sound. Just like the first installment, the sound design and sound effects for this movie are like nothing else you’ve ever ~~seen~~ heard. Part One won the Oscar for sound, and I’d be shocked if Part Two doesn’t win that, and probably more*. I joked coming out of the movie that they should just retire the sound category from the Oscars altogether, because this feels like the pinnacle sound effects in the movies. One of the big rewards for those who read the book (humblebrag) is hearing their bone-rattling depiction of “the voice,” a mind-control technique used by the Bene Gesserit.

A few days after seeing it, the other thing that has stuck with me is how scary this movie is. Not with jump scares or atmospheric creepiness like a horror movie. But the genuinely terrifying villains, who are scary in their delight for violence, their naked power seeking, their disdain for freedom and the law. It’s the worldview on display that is scary, more than the individual villains and their mobs. Because the parallels to our world today are so easy to see, where territorial imperialism, ethnic violence, drawn out trench warfare, and threats of atomic escalation are all back with us.

Edit: I realized I hit publish without finishing this post. I still hope everyone will see it, don’t let my downer of a review stop you. The movie is fun and it’s always darkest before the dawn!

May Shai-Hulud clear the path before you (to the Music Box or the nearest IMAX theater).

*PS speaking of the Oscars, how much of a bummer was it for the filmmakers who made shorts this year … when they heard WES ANDERSON made not one short, but several! I’d have been so mad!

Honeymoon Recap: Photos #2

We had a bit of trouble keeping up, and Mamba was in no hurry. But we were on the same page.

I could deal with instant coffee every day, if I got to drink it here.

My third and final fish of the day, a little bigger … a “teenager” as Eduardo put it.

La Cervecería Chaltén, a gem of a place in a tiny climbing town.

Honeymoon Recap: Photos #1

I wanted to share a few more pics that I didn’t get a chance to post during the trip.

El Ateneo Grand Splendid, a bookstore in an old theater in BA.

Kelly found the coolest bar, Tres Monos 🙈🙉🙊.

Zonda kitchen. Hands down, THE best meal of my life.

Fresh tomato ice cream at Zonda. I can’t even *imagine* a better meal. And the service!

I miss empanadas.

I miss empanadas. They are so good in Argentina (even better than Chile, sorry Chileans). I don’t know what makes them better, but I have a feeling it has to do with lard? We actually met a Japanese guy down there who initially said he came to see South America, but later admitted he came because he loved Empanada Mama in NYC and wanted the real thing.

I’m going on a mission to find the best ones in Chicago. Anyone have suggestions?

ChatGPT is a university in your pocket.

ChatGPT is a university in your pocket. One new way use I’ve found for ChatGPT is to “go back to school.” I can design and take a course on-demand, but unlike a MOOC, I can also fully customize it. In pursuing my vision for this sabbatical, one of my ideas was to revisit some things I learned about way back, in some 100- or 200-level philosophy course: the aesthetic concepts of Awe and The Sublime.

Before getting into the details, how does this relate to my vision? Religion never resonated for me, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve felt a pull to discover and develop the spiritual dimension in my life, in my own way. I’ve been meditating pretty consistently for several years, but during this time away from work I wanted to focus even more on the spiritual dimension of my life. Like all my interests, eventually I asked ChatGPT about it. This started as a conversation, and later I had the idea to ask ChatGPT to design an actual syllabus, for an imaginary course I wish I’d taken back in college.

Before ChatGPT, I would have done one of two things. Either I’d have ordered several books on my topic of interest, and probably not have read them; or I’d have done some haphazard Wikipedia and YouTube deep dives. The former is almost worthless. The latter is not much better—I would learn some surface-level stuff, but would be unlikely to engage with the material in an organized way. So I wouldn’t gain deep and lasting knowledge.

But ChatGPT has lowered the bar for engaging with complicated ideas. If you like the idea of taking a course, it can literally design the syllabus, organize the readings, generate lectures, and act as both a professor and TA. Most important for me, it makes me more likely to actually do the readings, because I can see where I am in the course and have a sense of progress; and because for any part that’s not interesting, I can just ask for a summary and skip it. At the margin, I’m much more likely to really learn something. If a full class isn’t interesting to you, you can structure your own learning however you want.

So before our honeymoon, I downloaded the first two readings from the syllabus to my Remarkable 2. Both are in the public domain, so I could easily find PDFs. I have been working through them at my own pace, and using ChatGPT for questions and context,

It’s obvious this technology will have an impact on Higher Education, or in my case, continuing education. But this is one way that it could be an opportunity for Higher Ed, rather than just a threat: let students design their more of their own courses, have professors review the syllabi and approve that they are “course credit worthy.” Assign TAs to give weekly oral quizzes, and then the professors design and administer oral mid-terms and finals. Maybe this can be done in cohorts, organized by year and major/elective area. I could see professors having fun with it too, adding personal favorites to the reading list, making it more esoteric but also ensuring it’s aligned enough with their knowledge base that they can easily administer the exams. We’ll see if universities embrace these types of experiments. I hope they do.

I’m finally taking an improv class.

I’m finally taking an improv class. Am I nervous? Yes, and excited. Improv comedy may be Chicago’s most important export, and is such a big part of cultural life in the city. Everybody knows somebody who is or has been deep in the improv game, moving up the levels at Second City, etc. Spending my 20s and 30s in Chicago, I always expected I’d eventually try it. Now I’m 35 and have time now, so it feels like now or never. Of course I’m not trying for SNL or anything. But I wanted to experience this part of Chicago’s culture before this phase of my life is over.

I did a little research on which class to take, but ultimately selected the program offered by my favorite place to see shows, the iO Theater. Last night was my first class, and I almost chickened out. But one of my rules for the sabbatical is to move toward the things that are scary. Mostly I was worried I’d be obviously the oldest person there, which wasn’t the case.

It was a blast. Uncomfortable in the right ways, and supportive in the right ways. Our teacher Sarah has a practiced but natural command of the room, obviously developed during her many hours onstage. She’s funny, obviously. Her advice to me after my first practice scene: “Make bigger choices.” I’m looking forward to the next eight weeks!