River Brown

Slice of Life #21

Today on lunch break I watched my a beta-test Pinkcast — a short, low-fi, weekly video offering insights, advice, and tips for working smarter and living better by Daniel Pink.

Ninety-five seconds. Pinkcast 4. Advice from Bob Sutton, Stanford U. professor of management. Bob credited a researcher and explained how they reached this conclusion. Dan asked Bob “What’s one question we could ask ourselves to be better leaders, better team mates?”

Do people leave encounters with you with more energy or less?

So, after someone talks with me, do they know I cared? (not am I cute and charismatic)  Do they know I have their back?  Did they get pushed to learn, to do well?

I think this is an interesting self watch.  I certainly notice my own energy boosts and drains with people I interact with all day.  I wonder if I can notice whether I leave them with more energy or drained?

So, that was my lunchtime fun and then on with teaching reading, going to the neighbor school to collect UOS teacher guides I begged and borrowed to use in the after school intervention, and then a stop at Costco for snacks for Thursday celebration.

While I was driving cross town — didn’t feel like getting on the freeway with the rain just starting — I settled into such a quiet lull with the stops at lights, the lines of cars and the rain coming down quite steadily.  It made everything silver grey and soft.  It washed all the lines away from my view and my thoughts.

It ironed the wrinkles out of my emotions and I cheerfully let a white haired woman driving a huge RV pull out in front of me. I let the rain plop and my wipers barely take care of it.

We weren’t supposed to get rain. The storms that come in off the coast have been dousing the north bay and south of here, and yes, snowing in the mountains, but Silicon Valley hasn’t been getting the drenching rain.

Just for a little while.  It really rained.  And I loved it.