Dan York

Poem: In the end, it didn't matter

In the end
It didn’t matter
That their kids got many other required vaccines for school

It didn’t matter
That their jobs required annual flu shots

It didn’t matter
That unvaxxed people they knew died

It didn’t matter,
Their lords said this vaccine was bad

Nothing else mattered
In the end

The Best Return To Work After Vacation Ever

Yesterday was my first day back at work after 10 days away on vacation where I did not check work email or Slack.

I approached it with the usual perspective of “Ugh! How many messages will I have to wade through!” Quite often it can take a day or a couple of days to get caught up.. and sometimes you can feel like you need a vacation from taking a vacation! 😀

I have a whole regular “return from vacation" routine down. The first thing I do is copy my entire email inbox to a mail folder so that my inbox only has new messages and I can start responding to those items. Then at some point in the day I start scanning through that mail folder to triage messages in importance, making sure I see messages from our CEO, senior management, my manager, our team, etc., etc.  Before I do that, of course, I usually spend time working my way through the zillion Slack channels we have trying to figure out what his most important. Usually the whole process can take hours to days to recover.

So I was prepared that this would be my first Monday of 2022.

To my utter surprise… it was the exact opposite!

You see, our executive team had decided to shut down the entire organization for the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, judging that all of us needed a full break to rest and recuperate given the pandemic and so much chaos happening in so many parts of the world.

And… perhaps more importantly… people DID take the time away!

There were a few email messages from staff, and a few from people outside the organization, but so few that I didn’t even bother with my usual “move everything to a folder” routine.

And Slack was blissfully quiet… at least until I got there yesterday! 🤣

There was no recovery time needed! I was just able to get in, answer a few queries and then get started with 2022 work and planning.

In 30+ years in the corporate world, I’ve never had a “return from vacation” quite like this - but I’ve also never had a company or organization truly shut down.

It was wonderful - and I highly recommend it for other companies!

P.S. We’re hiring! (Although only for a couple of positions right now, but other positions do open up over time.)

Finding the Toolchain to Consistently Create Content

If one of my aspirations for this year is to consistently create content, one of my personal challenges is to figure out HOW to easily do that.

Ideally, creating content on my own sites should be as easy as sending out a tweet, posting a message to Facebook or Mastodon, or posting an image to Instagram.

And therein lies my challenge.

I’d like to make it so that I could just post from my mobile phone or iPad, so that whenever I have a story idea I want to write I can just post something easily. And, I can also post from my laptop or desktop. I want to be able to post content from anywhere, just as I can with Twitter, Mastodon, and Facebook.

I want to remove any friction from creating content.

However, the main personal sites I write on - this DanYork.com site, Disruptive Telephony, and Disruptive Conversations - are all still hosted on TypePad, because that is where I created them 15 years ago! 😀 And, alas, there is no mobile app or easy way to create content. There IS a mobile web interface, but it doesn’t provide me with a way to create drafts and have a queue.

Now, if the sites were on WordPress, the WordPress mobile apps provide a great experience, but they aren’t… and the switching costs are large. There’s a great amount of work to move thousands of posts and images, including substantial URL rewriting/redirecting. It’s not an easy task.

I’d like to move the sites to WordPress eventually, but not this year.

For the moment, I’m using MarsEdit on my Macs, as I’ve done for many years. For the mobile side, I’m still exploring options. One thought is to use the DayOne journaling app that is now part of my daily workflow. Write the posts there and then copy/paste to the mobile TypePad interface. But I don’t know… I’m looking at other IOS editors, too, and so far not  yet finding the toolchain I need.

The search continues!  The goal is to remove friction from the creation process.

"Is It true? Is it necessary? Is it kind?" would be a good filter for posting to social media

When my wife and I were raising our daughters, there came a point when we tried to impress upon them that just because something was true didn’t mean you needed to SAY that right then. Yes, Dad might have dark circles under his eyes and look terrible because he was up all night sick, but does he really need to hear “you look terrible” right at this exact moment in time? That may be true, but did he need to hear it?

At some point we started suggesting running comments though a filter of three questions:

• Is it TRUE?
• Is it NECESSARY?
• Is it KIND?

If the answer was “Yes” to all three, then go ahead and say it. If not, perhaps hold back.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that * I * don’t always hold to that. Sometimes I’ve fired off a snarky message on social media that, while true, was probably neither necessary or kind. 🙁

Which was what got me thinking about these questions again. Right now there is so much vitriol, anger, and even hatred spewed out by people online. It’s been this way for years now… just look at the comments section for almost any YouTube video. And some of us of a certain age can remember back to some of the meanness in some Usenet newsgroups.

But I think it’s gotten worse lately. In part because of some of the extreme polarization that has happened politically in many countries around the world. There’s a winner-take-all, “you’re with us or you are the enemy” kind of mindset that is increasingly prevalent. And two years of a global pandemic have affected us all. We’re fatigued, exhausted, frustrated, angry … we aren’t at our best.

Just last week a young woman enthusiastically announced on Twitter that she was so excited about a new job at a company working with cryptocurrencies. She was excited and delighted to start, and was eager to work with other people.

And then people piled on her saying truly terrible things because they didn’t like the company she was joining or the overall industry into which she was going. Very mean, personal things.

You could watch in her subsequent tweets as what had started as a joyous celebration announcement turned into something extremely negative.

Why did people need to do that?

Sure, some of what might have been said might have been true about the company. And yes, the cryptocurrency “industry” is currently full of scams and fraud.

But was any of that truly necessary to share with this particular person? And was it kind to her?

We so often seem to forget when we fire off quick messages on social media, in particular, that there are human beings just like us on the other end of the exchange who will be receiving our snark and vitriol.

And right now with all the pandemic fatigue, in particular, critical statements we might brush off at another time can instead be taken quite hard.

If we all could use these questions as a filter BEFORE posting, might we wind up making the world a bit kinder?

Something to think about.

The origins of those questions

As an aside, I couldn’t remember where my wife and I had first heard those questions. (Perhaps on social media!) So I did some digging and found that, as the image with this post shows, there are many different versions of the questions in different orders. Some attribute the phrase to Buddha, but this article explains how that is false. The author noted that there are similarities in Buddhist texts, and dug deeper to find a Victorian-era (1872) poem by Mary Ann Pietzker, and references even before that to a “Reverend Mr. Stewart”.  Other articles point out similarities to a Quaker “three sieve” story, and even to some statements from Socrates. We may never know the exact origins, but regardless the questions are good ones.

My Themes for 2022

Following my pattern of the past 13 years (see list), my first post of 2022 across all my sites is of three words that are my aspirations or “themes” for the year ahead. They are not “resolutions” so much as guiding thoughts or principles.

In so many ways 2021 was a good bit of a “dumpster fire” of a year. We started off with such great hope that the pandemic would be under control … and ended with even higher case counts and more deaths that we’d had the previous year. It often does truly feel like the 672nd day of March 2020. So many of us struggled in so many ways. Yet amidst all that chaos, there were positive signs - and I remain grateful that I reached the end of the year with all my family in decent health (at least physically).

Looking on toward 2022...

HOPE

Last year brought me great clarity around what I see as my own my personal mission to help people understand our choice of futures - for the Internet, but also for ourselves and for our society. 

But 2021 also brought clarity that it is so easy to fall into despair. It does seem like we’re stuck in a perpetual Groundhog Day. The state of the pandemic is so frustrating, particularly for those of us who have done everything we can to protect ourselves, our families, and our communities. The breakdown in civility and discourse that we are seeing across the USA and across the world is extremely saddening. The polarization and politicization of even trivial issues is tragic. And our governments and leaders often seem incapable of doing anything helpful - and in fact sometimes seem to be doing the exact opposite of what makes sense - or are so mired in disagreement that nothing happens at all. And… weather events around the world seem to indicate that climate change is happening quicker than many forecast. There are so many tragic events happening to so many people, and even for those not directly affected, there is so much to fear that it can be paralyzing.

It often feels like we are on the edge of living in any of the zillion dystopian, post-apocalyptic movies or TV series that are out there.

It’s easy to despair. 

And yet… we can’t. For if we fall into the depths of despair, what is the point of being here? And who will pull us out?

We must hold on to the possibility of hope. 

We must.

And so what I want to do this year is to do whatever I can to help shine the light on and amplify the good work going on. (And there definitely IS - read "99 Good News Stories You Probably Didn’t Hear About in 2021”)

Not with “rose-colored glasses” or with naive, excessive optimism that just ignores everything else to hope things get better.. but rather with an action of seeking out the hopeful, positive, and optimistic in the midst of the chaos and despair. As I said in a tweet:

The challenge that lies before us is more than choosing hope over fear.
It is choosing hope *amidst* the overwhelming narratives of fear and doom.
It is choosing hope and optimism *despite* those fears.
It is choosing hope as a daily, gritty act of resistance and resilience.

To me, that is the work we all must do.

CONTENT

As I wrote at some length last year, I’ve been struggling through this whole pandemic, but even before that, to consistently create content, be it blog posts, podcast episodes, videos, newsletters or more. I optimistically wrote:

A goal in 2021 is to break through those blockages. I want to get writing again. I want to more consistently create podcast episodes. I’d like to send out more than one email newsletter in an entire year!

That didn’t happen. In fact, I sent out zero issues of that particular email newsletter, although I did send out two issues of a new newsletter. 

I produced a whopping 8 podcast episodes in 2021 (7 for my The Dan York Report podcast, and one for my “FIR On Technology” podcast), although I did submit all 12 monthly reports into the FIR podcast.

And… I only wrote * 11 * posts across all my different blog sites, including my employer’s site, and almost all of those were “administrative” notices such as about upcoming deadlines for various awards or elections. A far cry from the days when would write hundreds of posts each year. 🙁

A sad state of affairs for someone who loves to create content.

Now, I do give myself a bit of a break. I mean… pandemic!  It’s been hard on all of us and quite honestly simply surviving 2021 is a beautiful thing!

On the positive side, I was live-streaming on Twitch most of the year, and in doing so continued to learn an amazing amount more about Wikipedia. And, I set up a TikTok account to actually start playing with that platform.

But my aspiration in 2022 is to get back in the game… to be back telling the stories I want to tell… and to be helping promote the hopeful aspects of the futures we need to choose. And… to do so on my OWN sites! Lately I’ve started to write very long threads on Twitter that then get lost in the noise. I really need to be taking those threads and writing them as posts for their longevity - and to have them on sites I control, rather than being lost in some proprietary platform.

We’ll see!

HEALTH

Finally, I’ve really got to focus on my health. Like many people, I’ve been a bit too sedentary during the pandemic and eaten a bit too much comfort food. My weight is almost the heaviest I’ve ever been and I seriously need to start making some better food choices. And, being in my mid-50s there’s a number of medical checks I need to have. 

I need to focus on this!

Looking forward...

Overall I’m quite looking forward to 2022. I’m hopeful that maybe we can finally get the pandemic to a more reasonable state. I look forward to hopefully getting together with friends in our local area, and making new friends, too. I look forward to seeing family more frequently. I look forward to getting back to attending user group meetings and other professional events, and going to concerts and church services and so much more. I miss singing!

Hopefully we can get there… although admittedly 2022 isn’t starting off so great with the rising numbers.

I am also very excited about a new project I’m leading at the Internet Society about understanding Internet access via low earth orbit (LEO) satellites. It’s a hot topic with a lot of marketing hype right now - and we’ll be working to bring some clarity to that whole area. It should be both educational and fun!  

Let us hope this all continues to go well!

What about you? What are your aspirations for 2022?