Seeking Coastal Utopia

We live in a world of instant gratification. We seek the fast, cheap and easy. We consume information, live the vicarious fitness plan via the web, and buy the things that we want without getting out of our chair — in mere seconds. “yes, you really do need to work harder” by Jordan Whitfield on  Unsplash Hard work? We go to the vending machine over in the corner and buy it the premade something.  Prepackaged stuff. Ready to eat. Immediately consumed. Is this what we want? Of course we do! We are consumers. We are always trying to find a hack, we try to find a shortcut. We want our hard work to be easy. 6 Minute Abs! Get rich quick! Whiter teeth in just a few days! This is your hack to hard work . Hard work is only hard the first time you do it. Seriously. That’s it. Nothing else. It is not magical. It is not complex. It is just hard. We recognize that doing it the first time is hard, and after that, it is no longer hard. Wait, what? ...

Everyone is guilty of it. We are subconsciously unaware that everyone knows what everyone else knows. Confused? What? You do not know what I know about this? Ugh. What do you really know? Academic creep is a plague that affects all of us. It typically happens in academia, the teacher or professor who has taught the same lesson plan over and over, 300 times in the last 10 years, and students are asking some of the same questions that he has already explained 299 times before today. Or your boss who did the same role you are doing today — yet twenty years ago — has the experience she learned when she was in the trenches, cannot figure out how you are unable to see the trainwreck in front of you. How come these people don’t get it? They are new students. New employees. This is the first time they have ever seen this presentation. The first time they heard of this concept, they are babes in the woods. We do it with our children, to our spouses, to our co-workers. I am extra guilty...