For the month of November I’m participating in a daily gratitude challenge posted by the journaling app that I use, Day One, and here’s today’s prompt:

What activities do I enjoy?

You mean besides working on my website (which I’ve already written about a few too many times over the past few weeks)…

Samurai Original - Samurai Programmer 3 Computer Science T-Shirt, https://www.samuraioriginal.com/products/samurai-programmer-3?syclid=clcfsgm5ji7s73anktq0
Samurai Original – Samurai Programmer 3 Computer Science T-Shirt
  • LEGO: This wasn’t a thing for me before I moved to Las Vegas and started teaching STEAM & robotics in 2016. I’d obviously done some LEGO here and there and was re-introduced my last year in Orlando when I was working at Full Sail Labs. The combination of LEGO and the Mindstorms EV3 platform, LEGO became my go-to “I need to something without too much thinking” activity. Sometimes just sorting bricks was the end of the day to decompress. In the “before time,” having to pick up all of the bricks scattered around the classroom was also a bit frustrating, “damn kids” kind of thing, which became the mantra I’d mutter to motivate myself that I needed to retire. Lately the hang-up for doing LEGO is that I’ve gotten into a habit of feeling like I need to record a time lapse of my builds and that makes it less random and requiring a bigger block of time. At the moment I have five LEGO kit builds of over 700 pieces that I have waiting for my attention. Of course I created a webpage where I’ve posted my LEGO and robotics projects (click HERE ).
  • Music: I bought a new guitar this year. I took the time to play it last night. Fingers were not used to the steel strings. I’m going to need to play much more frequently and maybe even share my music  more over the next year. Lots of potential there. 
  • Drawing: One thing that surprised me working through my academic portfolio was how often I resorted to drawing and doodling when writing notes in class. Maybe I should pull together a collection of those images… For whatever reason for a midterm exam of a sociology class I turned in my test bluebook with a collection of three illustrated fairytales in the form of Q&As. I got an “A” for my efforts… I think I need to do a bit more of that on a regular basis.
  • 1977 LMU SO100 Sociology Midterm Blue Book-Fairy Tales Peter Piper by Joe Bustillos
    1977 LMU SO100 Sociology Midterm Blue Book-Fairy Tales Peter Piper by Joe Bustillos
  • 1977 LMU SO100 Sociology Midterm Blue Book-Fairy Tales A Woodchuck by Joe Bustillos
    1977 LMU SO100 Sociology Midterm Blue Book-Fairy Tales A Woodchuck by Joe Bustillos
  • 1977 LMU SO100 Sociology Midterm Blue Book-Fairy Tales Lil Red by Joe Bustillos
    1977 LMU SO100 Sociology Midterm Blue Book-Fairy Tales Lil Red by Joe Bustillos
  • Watching Movies: This afternoon I saw a documentary, Mr. Jimmy, about a Japanese guitarist who has spent his life recreating/playing Led Zeppelin music based on their live performances. It was showing at my local art/independent movie house, The Beverly, and the director was there to do a little Q&A after the screening. This year I’ve gone to the movies 37 times. I have over 400 movies and over 40 TV series on my PLEX media server and easily at least that many movies and TV series that I haven’t moved to my server. I love the challenge that good storytelling presents.

I could go on… but I’ll stop here. Maybe I’ll revisit this prompt later. I have to laugh when I think about my supervisor telling me that I’m going to get bored after I leave teaching in the classroom. Yeah, not too likely. 

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