notches

Hello everyone in blogger land. Thanks for coming.

Two things.

1) I feel like I am not able to blog as much as I would like to these days because having a job and a wife makes makes me a little more busy than being a single grad student. So if you are getting frustrated with checking my blog three times a day (which I know you do)and not seeing any updates, I would suggest that you actually subscribe to this blog and You'll receive updates as I post.

2) I think I am going to try writing a "choose your own adventure novel" with the help of volunteers. So if any of you would like to help, please let me know.

And now for my brief thought on pride.

I one tried to come up with a list of things I would do to become more humble. The list ended up being to long and I couldn't remember to do all of it. So I'm going to try to start over with one thing at a time. So, here's my first idea.

Rejoice over small embarrassments. In my new job, I get to opportunity to screw up on a fairly frequent basis. Not that things are going terribly wrong, but just that there are plenty of things that I could be doing better. And when I make mistakes, and people notice, my first instinct is to try explain it in such a way that I come out looking alright. I think this is a fairly normal reaction, but it's a reaction based on avoiding embarrassment.

I know that everyone probably does this to one extent or another, but what if instead, I was able to take every embarrassment as a learning opportunity? Everyone* likes to see an arrogant jerk taken down a couple of notches. But what if I liked to see myself taken down a notch, not because I'm a glutton for punishment, but because little embarrassment that are out of my control remind me I don't control people's perceptions of myself. I think being down a few notches is a good place to be, so I should rejoice when I get that opportunity.

The bigger they are, the harder they fall, so I'll be excited to take little falls.

*or at least me