Monthly Archives: September 2018

Sabbatical Day 8 – Book Done!

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My book is finally complete and published and ready to purchase!  It is called “I Am Not a Great Leader – A Short Primer on Leading to Real Agility”.  You can purchase the ePub version on lulu.com (click the image to go to the purchase page).  It will be available on Amazon, Kobo, iBookstore, etc. soon.

Book Cover Image: I Am Not a Great Leader - A Short Primer on Leading to Real Agility

If you would like to review it _and_ provide me with feedback for the second version, I can send you a PDF copy at no charge.  Please contact me through LinkedIn to do so.  I hope to do a second version with even more content and incorporating feedback from this first version sometime in the late fall or early winter.  Depends on how my classes are going.

Yesterday (Friday), I enjoyed going to school with Justice.  He had an 8:30 class and I had a 10:30 class.  I explored a bit while he was in his class and then we met up again. He came to my class with me.  It was my Mathematics 2155 class which is about proofs and logic.  It’s going to be quite easy, I suspect.  Based on the textbook and where we are starting the class, I’m actually worried I will be bored.  I’m going to have to work hard to not work ahead!  So to help with that, I’m going to do _all_ the exercises in the book as we go.  That will keep me busy, at least.

I’m trying hard to shift my habits to being more helpful around the house.  I think the first few days of my sabbatical were lacking in that regard.  Yesterday and today were better, but I think I can do more. Dishes, groceries, errands, tidying, taking care of kids and pets,… I’m hoping to relieve Melanie of more and more of that over the next week or so.  It takes a bit of work for me to even see what Melanie does to keep the household running.  It’s amazing all the little things, and particularly, all the little interruptions.  Hmm… that gives me an idea.  Maybe Melanie could try using the office during the day to get work done – leave the house! I’ll see what she thinks of it tomorrow.

Other little tidbits in the last couple days:

  • Haifa got her hair cut quite short.  It looks good and I can tell she really likes it.
  • Justice and I are planning to go to another Magic the Gathering pre-release in a few weeks.
  • Verity has done incredibly well biking to school on her own every day.  Now I need to help her with the bus route.
  • Ocean is suffering from some sort of anxiety that is triggering frequent hand-washing.  This is a relatively new thing and I’m hoping I can help her resolve her anxiety.  I played with polymer clay with her today, and also did some drawing with her.
  • Melanie and I haven’t done anything together for a few weeks.  We thought of maybe going to see a movie, but there isn’t really anything worth going to in the theatres right now that we haven’t already seen.
  • Yesterday afternoon was the Waldorf school fall picnic.  I met a very nice couple from Brazil. I hope to have them come visit and invite my colleague David and his wife since they are also Brazilian.  (David, if you’re reading this, don’t worry – I’ll give you lots of notice!)
  • I’ve been napping almost every day.  I think it’s a combination of allergies and fighting off a bit of a cold.

As a result of publishing my book, and also having started my classes, my personal kanban board has some significant updates.  Here’s the current state:

20180908 Personal Kanban Board

Sabbatical Day 6 – First Day of Class

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I attended my first day of university classes since 1995!  I cycled to class.  It took about 35 minutes which was 5 minutes longer than I planned.  I showed up about 10 minutes to start and there weren’t too many spots left so I ended up at the back of the class in “Mathematics 3020 Introduction to Abstract Algebra”.  I intend to change that for next class on Tuesday – hopefully I will be able to sit in the 2nd or 3rd row instead of the 5th.  I am the “old guy” in the room.  Everyone looks very young.  There was a guy sitting almost right in front of me who answered a lot of the questions.  I answered one, but otherwise shut up.  I took seven pages of notes.  So far, it is stuff that I already know.  I’m trying to decide if I work ahead in the textbook or if I just follow along.  The textbook is pretty well-written (I’ve read up to where we ended the class today) so I could really leap ahead without too much trouble.  I cycled back home immediately after class, ate a terrible lunch, and then fell asleep for four hours.  My day hasn’t had much else to it.

Tonight I’ll do the last little bits of my leadership book:

  • Write acknowledgements
  • Get an ISBN
  • Start the project on lulu.com

I’m expecting I will get final edits tomorrow and be able to finish the export for lulu.com at that time… and then it will be published!  I’ll have completed one of the projects on my board.

Sabbatical Day 5 – Work

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Today was one of the few days in my calendar with scheduled work for my company, BERTEIG.  Melanie, Travis and I had a Partner’s meeting (basically board of directors).  Because our fiscal year end is August 31, we spent a bit of time reviewing the financials for the year (thanks Xero for a great accounting platform!) and doing a year-long retrospective.  We also talked about our strategic plans and made some updates to our goals.  Most of the details of that stuff is done with the full BERTEIG leadership team, not just by the Partners.  I can’t really share any details since that stuff is confidential, but suffice it to say that we have some great stuff planned… that I won’t be working on!!! (Sabbatical, remember?)

Aside from that, I spent some time with the family in the late afternoon and early evening.  Walked the dog.  After the kids went to bed, I finished the writing portion of my book titled “I Am Not A Great Leader” and did a v1 cover design.  I’ve sent the full thing to the editor (my mom).  I’ll be releasing it as soon as I get the edits back, get the ISBN number and put it up on Lulu.com.  I’ll be sure to post here when that stuff is finished – actually, I’ll be posting just about everywhere when it is done!  Here’s my super-fast cover design – let me know if you have any feedback.  (I’ll get a professional designer for v2.)

I Am Not A Great Leader - Cover

Sabbatical Day 4 – Kids and Heat

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My day was mostly with kids: I cycled with Verity to school for her first day of high school.  Yay!  I got back home and took a very quick dip in the pool.  Then I took Justice to a oral surgeon for a consultation about his wisdom teeth – no need to do surgery until the school year is over.  Yay!  Then I ate lunch and I spent a bit of time sunbathing and swimming in the heat.  Yay!  Then I cycled back to Verity’s school and picked her up.  Yay!  Then Melanie, Haifa, Verity, Ocean and I went into the back yard and the pool.  Yay!  Then we all went out for ice cream.  Yay yay!!  Then we kinda ate a light dinner and puttered around.  We said evening prayers.  And I took my camera outside to try some night sky photography.  Yay!  I tried getting software to work to “stack” the images – but I couldn’t get it to work.  Boo!

So that’s eight “yay”s and one “boo”.  That’s a pretty good day!

Also, I’ve made good progress in setting up my personal kanban board for my sabbatical projects:

The expedite column is for Melanie to give me work to do while I’m not working at BERTEIG.  I’m hypothesizing that a WIP limit of 5 for the In Process stage is probably about right for me.

Sabbatical Day 3 – The Book

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Well, I’ve had a few hours to work on the book this weekend, but it’s still not ready for final review.  I probably have between 2 and 5 thousand words left to write before it’s properly done which means it’s going to end up being somewhere between 25000 and 30000 words.  Longer than I anticipated – I guess that means I have lots to say?  I’m a bit frustrated because I really hoped to have it out of the way before my sabbatical started (3 days ago), then I hoped it would be done by the end of the long weekend.  Now… I’m going to give myself just two more days to finish the writing.  That takes me up to the first day of my classes on Thursday.  Here’s hoping!

Today was a nice day.  Verity and I cycled to her school as practice.  I hung back about ½ a block so that she would have to lead the way completely.  She had no problems and is now confident about cycling to the school.  It’s a bit far: about 3.5km and at her normal pace about 20 minutes to get there.  I’m sure she will speed up as she gets more familiar with the route and her own capabilities.  Tomorrow we will go again as it is her first day and I promised that I would ride with her.  We have to leave pretty early.  School starts at 8:30, I want her to be there by 8:15, and I want to leave a bit of a buffer even so.  We will leave the house at 7:50.

Justice and I went to the Western campus to pick up our student cards.  It was super well-organized and quick.  We were in a long line, but it only took about 5 minutes to get to the front and just a few seconds for the staff to retrieve our student cards and give them to us.  I’m now the proud holder of a Wester student card which gives me access to a bunch of university services and facilities.  I’m hoping they have a swimming pool that I can use during the colder months when our home pool is closed.  Anyway, Justice and I also had a bit of a laugh at some campus graffiti about “speciesism” with a drawing of a cow.

One of my main administrative wrap-up tasks is complete: I finished submitting all my receipts for my work expenses.  On sabbatical, I hope I don’t have many and so it will be pretty easy from here on out.  It’s also our business’ year-end so it feels good to have them done in a timely manner.  It took a couple hours this afternoon to finish.

Sabbatical Day 2 – A Sunburn and Sore Feet

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Lots more housework today, but a bunch outside too.  I’ve burned my forehead a bit and my feet are sore from standing so much.  I won’t bore you with the details.

Tonight I have to finish up my writing project that I hoped to finish before the start of my sabbatical.  I started work on it nine days ago when I took my trip to Hong Kong.  I wrote about 21000 words on the flights and while at the hotel in Hong Kong.  I’ve edited about half that, and I still have probably about 3 to 5 thousand words left to write.  I was hoping to publish early this week which means before mid-day on Wednesday.  That will be challenging at this point, but is still possible.  Maybe by the end of the week.

Sabbatical Day 1

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Typical busy Saturday with just a bit of weekend in it.

Yesterday I turned off most of the Slack channels with my team so that I won’t be bothered there, and I put an auto-responder on my business email saying I won’t be back for a year!!!

Today I did a bunch of errands, but I also got time at the pool.  I did a little swimming and spent a bit of time in the sun – it was a hot day here in London.  I only spent a tiny bit of time on my math prep, but that’s okay.  I went to see my professors about 10 days ago to get a sense of how I need to prepare for my classes, and basically, I don’t.  I’m still doing a bit of prep, and I bought the textbook for one of my classes (“How to Prove It” by Velleman), but basically, I’m looking forward to starting on Thursday.  Also today, I helped my daughter Verity clean her bird’s cage (gross), took care of my other daughter’s dog (a standard poodle puppy) for a little while, did some laundry, cooked dinner, and best of all, I ate Fruit Loops for breakfast 🙂  I also listened to the No Agenda podcast which is pretty much my favourite source of analysis of current events.

I also created a list of things I want to do during my sabbatical:

  1. Family Time
    1. Spend time with each of Melanie, Justice, Haifa, Verity and Ocean on a scheduled basis, one person per day of the week
    2. Start holding devotionals or firesides
    3. Help Haifa and Justice get their driver’s licenses
    4. Help Melanie with her household backlog
    5. Work on our family tree
  2. Personal Stuff
    1. Complete 6 courses in Mathematics at University of Western Ontario: 2 in the fall, 4 in the winter terms
    2. Lego projects including an architectural project, a Harry Potter project and updates to my workroom
    3. Coin sorting (mostly pennies) for my coin collection
    4. Study French – I would like to be able to teach in French by the fall of 2019
    5. Complete reading “Elliptic Tales”

I won’t get everything in that list done, but it would be nice to make progress on everything!

All-in-all, a quiet start to my sabbatical.