How much of your life experiences are new-to-you novelty?
How do you balance optimism and pessimism while navigating novelty?
How do you notice anxiety?
Have you ever felt stuck?
Multiple experiences in the last few months have led me to reflect on the continuum of experience from routine to novelty. I’ll tell you a story for each:
Have you ever wanted to do something? Perhaps go to college. Or start a blog. Or pay off debt. Or climb a mountain. Or raise children. Or create and run a school in the Philippines. Or retire near a beach.
Have you ever made a todo list, a bucket list, new year resolutions, goal or (gasp) an objective with some key results? I’ve tried all of these, and probably more, to plan my future. My most recent iteration is:
I started this blog because I wanted to write more. Writing and sharing my writing help me clarify my thoughts and become a better communicator. Communication is one of our Dona-Koppe family values.
I have dreams to write about many different topics through this blog – personal, professional, concrete, abstract. In a flurry of new year energy, I recently brainstormed a list of about 30 blog posts. The list is both energizing and daunting. Some of the posts were finished quickly while others – like this one – took substantial time. Like everything in life, practice will make the process more efficient, more familiar, more intuitive.
In 2015, on my first trip to Tokyo, Japan, a colleague referred me to The Secrets of Happy Families by Bruce Feiler. Bruce learns from soccer moms, self-help authors, investors, military vets, coaches, pastors, and software developers to coalesce an interesting array of strategies to improve organization, communication, education, and all of the other -tions that happen to make “happy” families. In a few words: adapt, talk, play & try. I enjoyed the book and learning about it was a pleasant surprise. I hadn’t expected to learn about a family book on my work trip.
Welcome to my blog! I am Jason Koppe. I am a life-long learner, and want to write more. If you read this blog, you’ll learn more about me. And, maybe it will connect us even more. Welcome!
12.5 years ago, in June 2008, I started a blog – https://nssadoc.blogspot.com/ – which was focused around documenting the failures of computer systems. The idea was to counterbalance all of the happy path documentation I wrote in college. I felt like the documentation (always for posterity) was too narrow: documentation left out the sometimes messy and failure-laden journey towards accomplishing a task.