New Words My Wife Uses

Teachers are also part-time meteorologists. We live where there are four seasons each year and Winter can be an exciting time for kids and educators alike due to the possibility of a snow day. I really don't know who is more excited to get the announcement of a school closing due to the weather, my wife or my kids but I really think it's my wife.What I have noticed, in the past few years, is how expansive her vocabulary has become in relation to weather. Lately, it the polar vortex that has her psyched up. That's not a phrase that just gets normally dropped into a lively morning banter but in the past few weeks, I have heard it numerous times.

"Probably going to need to get out the bird water heater due to the polar vortex that's coming."

Read that sentence a few times and try not to have your brain explode.

"We are probably going to miss school tomorrow due to Winter Storm Harper."

My first thought was that an X-Men character was going to attack the school or some new kid with three first names was shutting the place down. I had no idea that we had taken to naming Winter weather storms.

We all have way too much time on our hands.

Get Back Out There - Thank you Jerry Seinfeld

It's been more than a year since I posted anything on this blog and if you ever talk with my family, it's not for lack of me having thoughts on pretty much anything. No one really cares what our opinions are but internally, I believe every cares about what I think. I've been putting in a lot of treadmill miles this Winter and have watched a bit of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. The conversations are funny but what I have found myself relating with more and more is Jerry Seinfeld's attitude on life. On the surface, it would be easy to think that him and I have nothing in common. This is where people's tendencies to only see differences and not similarities prohibit us from getting past this wall and to in fact see, we are much more alike than at first glance.

"No one cares!"

"No one cares what you think!"

Those two sentences I have heard him repeat on quite a few episodes and it aligns quite rightly with my whole attitude and outlook on life. This is not an attitude that I have held forever. I have had a certain mental evolution over the past twenty years that has led me to a peace of mind that I was sorely lacking.To further illustrate this point, read this study linked below.

Look at this title:

The Spotlight Effect in Social Judgement: An Egocentric Bias in Estimates of the Salience of One's Own Actions and Appearance by Kenneth Savitsky

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1adc/74d682c11573e95d53c03da6a1449329ae03.pdf

I'm not going to deep dive into this study but I really do encourage you to read it. Here is my summary. We think we are way more important than we are and in doing so we self censor and make decisions based on our own perception of what we believe people think and not what they actually think.

I started writing this blog because I thought other people, specifically my friends and family, would be craving my mental musing and delight in my unique take on things. Come to find out, that no one  cares, okay my Mom cares, but pretty much this is for me now. I write because I like to write. I share my take because it gives me some satisfaction of sending it out to the universe.

I love you universe.