As an aside to the mundane activities I have become so accustomed to as of late, I feel that it is time to take a break from a few of the things I have enjoyed doing in order to focus on other areas in life that I feel need attention. The areas that I feel are more important and should be focused on currently are the following:
- Spending more quality time teaching my children
- Living a healthier lifestyle
- Learning more programming skills
Let me extrapolate a little on each one of these major topics, starting with the first bullet point from above. “Spending more quality time teaching my children.” Not only do I want to spend just regular old time, I want to spend quality time with my two sons, Oliver and Dexter. Quality is defined as such:
qual·i·ty
[kwol-i-tee] Show IPA noun, plural qual·i·ties, adjective
noun
1. an essential or distinctive characteristic, property, or attribute: the chemical qualities of alcohol.
2. character or
nature, as belonging to or distinguishing a thing: the quality of a
sound.
3. character with respect to fineness, or grade of excellence: food of poor quality; silks of fine quality.
4. high grade; superiority; excellence: wood grain of quality.
5. a personality or character trait: kindness is one of her many good qualities.
The closest meaning from the list above that meets what I feel I am trying to express would have to be number four: “high grade; superiority; excellence.”
Oliver, my eldest (currently a five year old aspiring mind in kindergarten), was recently sent home his very first ‘report card.’ Although he had quite astounding marks and was above average in a lot of areas, I do feel that I have been somewhat negligent in the vein of satiating his knowledge quest. I want to begin providing my children with skills that will benefit their youthful, eager minds in hopes to not only make everlasting familial memories, but to propel their education and comprehension status to better their cognitive, rational and emotional capabilities throughout their lives. With that being said, I want to provide them with the opportunity to begin learning programming, design and architecture by means of performing computer related activities, mathematical theories and robotic engineering. I am going to research this area in hopes to provide links, paths of study and the like so that I can reference this goal at this central point, making it easier on myself (as well as ease of updating progress, since it will directly be linked to the blog). As a reference note to myself, here are a few items of interest that I would like to address with my sons’ and wife:
Production vs. Consumption.
The idea that you not simply accept what has been created and consume that product, but rather focus your skill-set to create, albeit produce, what you feel should be known. Playing video games that someone has preconceived for you does nothing for your cognitive development. Why toy with something that the outcome has already been derived, regardless of the path you take to get there. Develop your own world where a consumer uses cognitive skills to complete tasks, thus strengthening your skills as a developer, designer or your overall persona. Put your mind to use. Feel a sense of accomplishment. 90% of success is to simply show up. Arrive. Do work. Put your mind to good use by utilizing your skill-set and expanding it in such a way that the work you are completing surpasses the work you did the day before. How does this fit in with what I was speaking of earlier? Children, at least my children, have an extremely hearty intellectual appetite. To whet this appetite, parents, or at least I, should insert evocative, thought provoking tasks that can provide a sense of accomplishment to them when completed (not necessarily even just to the point of completion, but the steps along the way to completion). The journey of completing said tasks, as well as the eventual comprehension that they have completed that particular task, strengthens their knowledge, which in turn strengthens their self-esteem. Eat at the dinner table as a family without the accompaniment of technological devices. Involve your kids in dinner time discussions, even if it is simply telling seemingly meaningless stories at the dinner table; just include the kids in the discussion, letting their cogs rotate as they ponder the discussion at hand.
Moving on to the secondary bullet point that I wrote above, “living a healthier lifestyle,” involves strictly myself and my own self control. Currently, my self control when it comes to the food I consume is extremely lackadaisical. I am my own worst enemy in this area of my life, which should be the absolute easiest to control. There are a few motivational blogs that I am currently following to help me with my utter lack of self control. One of my favorite motivational sites comes from a Registered Dietician and can be found here. I want to try to keep a daily food journal, as I feel that seeing the complete lack of self control I exhibit on paper may help my problem. Along with at least being more cognizant of what I consume, I feel the need to get some daily exercise. This will more than likely be in the form of jogging the small route in my neighborhood.
As brief note on learning more programming skills, I feel that I can combine the last two bullet points that I first mentioned above by creating a nice, clean application (a WordPress plugin) that can keep track of daily meals with extrapolation into carbohydrates, calories, protein, fat and other dietary information that you consumed during that particular meal/snack. This data will be able to be published to social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, or Google+. I would like to be able to export the data into a blog entry, so that the blog entry maintains the clean interface of a blog, not some nonsensical data chart that creates an unwanted design on your blog.
Anyway, it’s time to go out and do work.
