Chandra Clarke

Offering Whatever Light I Can

5 Interesting Things – June 8, 2021

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I read a lot. Articles, clips, books, magazines. I quite often come across things that I wish more people knew about. Recently, it dawned on me I could actually do something about that. (I’ve only been running this blog for several years now. I guess I’m a slow learner.)

Soooo, today I’m introducing what I hope will be a monthly feature: 5 Interesting Things. It’s a short round up of things I’ve found that are: potentially actionable, inspiring, thought-provoking. Let’s get to it!

The Whitest Paint Ever Could Block the Sun and Cool Earth “Blocking” is not the right word here. “Reflecting” would be more accurate. This one is interesting because it’s potentially a major game changer – and one that you could use. While we work to lower our carbon emissions, we could also be working to lower the temperature and reduce our air conditioning bills. This would be particularly useful on the top of all those flat buildings that are generally baking hot in the heat of summer. Know someone who has a flat roof? Forward this to them.

Carbon Robotics Talking of game changing, here’s one for agriculture. This company makes robots that get rid of weeds. This has the potential to reduce the need for herbicides, which will be better for human health and also our waterways (“runoff” is a major problem in agriculture.) The machines aren’t cheap, but no worse than most farm equipment. Know a farmer? Let them know.

Is Big Brother Listening? No, and yes. A privacy tech worker offers an explanation for why it seems like your devices are listening to you, even if you don’t have Alexa or Siri enabled. Key takeaway: “If my phone is regularly in the same GPS location as another phone, they take note of that. They start reconstructing the web of people I’m in regular contact with.The advertisers can cross-reference my interests and browsing history and purchase history to those around me. It starts showing ME different ads based on the people AROUND me.”

How Cities Will Fossilize. We human beings need to think long term much more often. This article encourages us to think about DEEP time. A fascinating read.

Bamboo: The Tradition of the Future. This video is a short introduction to the many, many uses of bamboo. Bamboo has a growth rate of up to a meter/day (!) and has structural properties equal to that of steel and concrete. We should be looking hard at it, rather than logging old growth forests.

Talking to the animals…

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My vicious brute, Sasha.

As depressing as the environmental news is from day-to-day, one thing never fails to amaze me: how well certain animals manage to adapt to the presence of man. I thought of this the other day I stepped out on the porch. I caught sight of a squirrel ambling across the yard.

I should tell you that we don’t have a lot of big trees on our property, and the ones we do have are spaced out along the length of the back. As I was watching this squirrel I thought perhaps this might be a touch inconvenient. I was wrong.

We do have a fence around one part of our property. A five foot wooden one, which this squirrel uses as a sort of rodent freeway. He (or she, I wasn’t close enough to ask) hopped on the post, and was able to walk all the way from one side of the yard to the other. The fence is apparently just the right height from which a squirrel can safely tease our dogs. I know this because it stopped, several times, tail flicking, while the dogs had fits. I reckon tail flicking must be the squirrel equivalent of: neener neener.

From the fence he then hurled himself onto our neighbour’s fence. When that didn’t take him as far as he wanted to go, he yeeted himself onto a clothesline, and from there to someone’s roof. It was then that I realized that the little runt could travel all over town without setting so much as a paw on a tree trunk, if necessary.

Birds are incredibly adaptable too. Pigeons, a prime example, know exactly how to suck up to older ladies with bags of bread crumbs. And who needs trees when there are so many statues around?

We have a lot of mourning doves around here — possibly because of the grain mills and farms in the area. I’m especially fond of mourning doves. They’re so adaptable, they can build nests smack in the middle of my narrow window ledge. Did you know they start cooing at four in the morning? They’ll start even earlier than that if they know you crawled into bed at two. Cute little things, doves.

Hummingbirds have become pretty dependent on people too. I don’t know what the hummer population would do if there was a sudden shortage of those plastic flower thingies that are always filled up with sugar water. Or for that matter, how the finches would fare without their feeder, or what the sparrows would do without suet balls . . .

And how about dogs? We own a pair of [deep breath] Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers, a breed renowned for their keen hunting ability. Part retriever, part pointer, they’ll track down anything. Just one tiny genetic step away from the vicious, ruthless, wild wolf. Grrr.

Erm.

Okay, look, I’m not saying our pooches aren’t keen hunters. Heck, they can smell a cupcake at fifty metres. They’ll point at anything with gravy on it, and they’ll retrieve anything from the supper table. Including your fingers, if you’re not careful.

Put them out in the wild though, and I’m not so sure. Pheasants don’t come wrapped in cellophane, and rabbits don’t require can openers, so I doubt our dogs could find them. And certainly the idea of actually sleeping on the ground would confuse them. Their version of “roughing it” involves barking softly.

Cats would not be dining on such delicacies as “Italian Style Fish Fantastico” in the wild. Neither would they find many balls of yarn, wind-up mousies, or fuzzy scratching posts. And there would be no one around to get rid of their fleas.

Bears have been known to clamber into hot tubs for a soak, moose love water sprinklers, and if you search for Stoat Kit Goes Wild On Trampoline, you will not be disappointed.

My point is, for all our very evident faults, humanity is not especially soft, weak, or hedonistic compared to the rest of the animal kingdom. We just figured out how to build sofas first.

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What’s your favourite example of critter adaptation to modern life? Answer in the comments.

Free Excerpt: The Entrepreneurial Parent

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Today, I’m posting a free excerpt from our latest book, The Entrepreneurial Parent: Run Your Business, Raise Your Family, Keep Your Sanity! It’s available at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Introduction

It was a miserably hot and sticky July afternoon.

Earlier that day, we had discovered that our house, a triplex located in a not-so-good part of town, needed an expensive repair and that one of our tenants upstairs wasn’t going to make her rent payment … again.

We had been putting eighteen-hour days into our business, and our nights were completely given over to the demands of our firstborn son. Just one month old, he wouldn’t sleep for more than forty-five minutes at a time, had a voracious appetite, and was developing a terrible case of colic.

And the house—our office—was a complete mess.

So, of course, it happened.

Just moments after getting him settled—at long, long last—and sitting down at the desk to deal with some desperately urgent customer service issue, our baby started up again. Our sweet, innocent, gorgeous little gift of a boy wailed …

… And Chandra shouted in frustration.

Naturally, Terry then shouted at Chandra. He was short on sleep, was trying to work on some programming bug, and she had just shouted at a baby.

We both stared at each other, aghast, for a very long time.

This was not how things were supposed to be.

Was it?

*

The media would have you believe a lot of things about being an entrepreneur.

If you’re under thirty, you have probably come to believe that it involves hoodies and all-night whiteboard scribbling sessions and espresso-fuelled coding marathons. A few months of ramen noodles and then presto-bingo! Growth hacking. Scaling. VC funding. A multi-million dollar acquisition.

If you’re over thirty, well, there’s always the Richard Branson model. Jet planes and private islands. Corporate takeovers and really good scotch. Motorbikes and mansions. Ooh, and government bailouts!

Entrepreneurialism has become a lifestyle. The word freedom gets tossed around a lot.

All the cool kids want to do it.

 

Parenthood looks pretty shiny and awesome from afar too.

Motherhood is all about being perfectly made up and coiffed, gazing down adoringly at your angelic little tot in the early morning light. And fatherhood is clearly all about having heart-to-heart talks with your preteens, out in the fresh autumn air, while raking the leaves and smiling. There’s usually a sweet dog boinging around in the background too.

Facebook. TikTok. Instagram. Or whatever is currently hot as you’re reading this. These sites don’t help matters much when it comes to perceptions versus real life.

I just had an AMAZING dinner at Rocky’s. The dry-aged steak was out of this world! #grateful #ballin’
Gorgeous celebrity-grade photos of perfect weddings.
So proud of Sarah! A+ on her math exam. Loving life right now!
Yeah man! Just cleared my inbox to ZERO and am OUTTA here for a week in Maui and two weeks in Greece!Sepia-filtered shots of urban tourist attractions. A sidebar filled with ads about banking a million bucks with no effort. Passive income, baby!

Everyone seems to have it all together … while there you sit at a desk littered with bills and Lego® pieces and baby bottles and wondering if you can put in Just. One. More. Hour … before crawling into bed.

The reality is that starting a business and making it a success is one of the most challenging things you can do, career-wise. Meanwhile, having children and raising a family is one of the most difficult things you can do personally. So it would be absolutely insane to try to both at once, right?

But thousands of us do, every single day.

Some of us even do this as single parents, or with special-needs kids, or with ailing parents. Or all of the above! It’s tough; no, wait—it’s exhausting. But—and here’s where it gets really crazy—even with all of the blood, sweat, and tears, the guilt and the doubt, you wouldn’t have it any other way, would you?

No, we didn’t think so. And neither would we.

That’s why we wrote this book. We wrote it for you, the unsung heroes of the business world, who are out there on the front lines, following your dreams and passions. You’re the ones out there trying to get it done and do right by your family.
We want to show you that it is possible to do both and still maintain your sanity.

Who Are We?

We are Terence Johnson and Chandra Clarke, and boy, do we know what it’s like down in the trenches.

We founded Scribendi.com, a company we built from a basement startup up to be the world’s largest and most respected editing and proofreading services firm. When it was acquired, Scribendi had staff in nearly every country worldwide, and had provided English language document revision to customers in more than 100 countries. It was a Profit500 company a number of times, and Chandra was in the Profit W100 for several consecutive years.

After a sabbatical of sorts, we moved on to round two of our entrepreneurial career. We currently own an education platform that provides courses in writing, editing, and proofreading; the small press Tiger Maple Publishing that produced this very book; a board games café and independent bookstore called Turns and Tales; and a number of other ventures and investments.

On the family side, we have four children and two dogs. As we write this, our kids range in age from teenager (uh-oh!) down to third grader. We homeschooled our kids while running Scribendi, and of course we also ferried them to all of the extracurricular stuff you might expect, like soccer practice, swimming lessons, karate, Scouts, and piano class. We still do.

We volunteer, too. Our commitments have changed over the years, but right now, Terry is the president of a national charity pushing to get better public transportation infrastructure in our country, is heavily involved in provincial and federal politics, and sits on a local housing board. Chandra served as chair of her local library board until just recently, found time to complete a PhD, and is currently involved in environmental activism.

Now, if you have been the victim of a few of those stupid clickbait articles promising to tell you how Guru X did Amazing Thing Y!, you’re likely waiting for the other shoe to drop. You know, that throwaway line that reveals that Guru X had some sort of advantage, like a huge inheritance, that you can’t hope to duplicate. So let’s address that concern before we get any further.

We fully acknowledge that we owe a big debt to our respective backgrounds. We both came from aspirational families that had worked their way up to middle-class comfort by the time we were teenagers. Both of us had gotten our undergraduate degrees and had some work experience before starting our business, so we had the comfort of knowing we could probably find employment if things went bad. We definitely recognize that we benefited from our ethnic heritage (white) in a society that still, stupidly and systemically, privileges such a thing. (Terry is an immigrant, but the toughest adjustment he had to make in his new country was learning how to ice skate.) And we should also note that we are fortunate enough to live in a politically stable country with universal health care.

What we didn’t have, unlike those article gurus, is any startup capital or seed funding. No big savings accounts to draw on. No credit cards to max out. Nor did we have any mentors, support networks, or formal business training. Also, cross out government support and bank loans until much, much later in our entrepreneurial journey.

We certainly couldn’t afford babysitters or nannies, and we lived too far away from family members to get much tot-minding. Terry’s family did what they could to help us from afar by sending baby gear and lots of encouragement, while Chandra’s parents mostly thought we were nuts.

We tell you all of this not to brag (well, okay, maybe a little), but let you know where we’re coming from. We know exactly how hard it is to manage staff while you’ve got a teething tot waking you up every few hours.

We’ve faced the same decisions you’ve faced: upgrade the computer or buy the bed you need to replace the crib? Repair the @#$%^! dishwasher that has broken (again!) or crank through the three hundred emails that have piled up in the last half-day?

We’ve seen it all … And we’ve now come to a place where we’re happy, healthy, and we even have time for hobbies. You remember those, right?

So now we want to help you get to that same sweet spot. And with any luck, reading this book will help you get there faster.

The Entrepreneurial Parent: Run Your Business, Raise Your Family, Keep Your Sanity! Available at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Image Credit: Photo by Standsome Worklifestyle on Unsplash

Too Fast? I Wish…

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I write a lot. There are letters to friends, replies to readers, articles, texts, social media comments, columns, and books. Some days I  live in front of the computer. I think my fingers are flattening out at the tips — a modern day version of the scribe’s middle-finger callus I suppose.

I hear a lot of people say that computers are hard to use. Apparently, folks feel that technology is moving too quickly, and it’s scary.

Personally, I also have difficulties using computers. I’m no techno-peasant — if it has buttons, and beeps, I own it. I’ve been using the home version of the computer since the first VIC 20 came out years ago. (Yes, I am that old.) For me, computers are difficult to use because technology isn’t advancing fast enough.

The thing you have to realize you see, is that computers are essentially stoopid. Using one is very much like talking to a three year old. When you a tell a three year old what to do, you have to be clear, concise, and keep in mind that they are very, very literal.

For example, if you’re on the phone, and you need to write something down in a hurry, you can tell your kid to go get you a pencil from your desk. However, if there are only pens on your desk, your kid will come back empty-handed, and look surprised when you get annoyed.

Likewise, computers follow your instructions down to the letter. Way back when, using your computer consisted of typing in lines, no, pages, of programming instructions. (Who else wants to date themselves by remembering PEEK and POKE commands?) No matter how carefully you typed, you almost always missed a small detail. If you tried to run the program, the thing would get a serious case of electronic indigestion. And, almost always, the thing you missed would be a @#$%^! comma in line 4657. No, I’m not bitter about it. Honest.

Computers today are a little better, but not much. The one I’m working on now doesn’t know I’m Canadian. Consequently, every time I run the spell check, it tells me I don’t know how to spell `colour,’ `centre,’ and `Tuktoyuktuk.’ I could add these things to the program’s dictionary, but this makes everything an agony of decisions. How many times am I likely to refer to Newfies in the future? Is the conservative leader O’Toole going to be around long enough to warrant the disk space?

Finances on the computer are fun too, because we’re still in a transition stage. We’re not an entirely cashless society yet, so you really can’t use the computer efficiently. To issue a paper cheque right now (and yes, there’s an astonishing number of places that still insist on cheques), I’d have to turn on the computer, access the program, enter the data, turn on the printer, oh yes – change the paper in the printer, or . . . I could go into my pocketbook and sign on the dotted line.

Likewise, my bank keeps haranguing me to go paperless with my bank account statements, and my accountant still wants everything printed out… which makes me think the bank isn’t really concerned about the environment so much as it wants to offload it’s stationary costs onto me. But I digress.

Yesterday, while trying to update the firmware for a monitor, my computer kept insisting it couldn’t possibly find the monitor I was trying to update… by displaying an error message on the monitor I was trying to update. My iPad insists that I update its operating system and assures me that it will be able to update itself overnight as long as it’s kept plugged in, yet every day for a week now, I’ve received the message from my plugged in iPad that it wasn’t able to update itself. I guess I need to make some time later to hold it’s digital hand?

So you see, I can’t wait for computers to get smarter. I want mine to take orders like the one on the bridge of Star Trek does (without reporting what I’m buying or doing to a corporate headquarters). I want it to learn my version of shorthand. I can’t wait for a “smart” home with a genuinely self-cleaning oven, and a freezer that knows when I am running perilously low on rocky road ice cream and adds it to the grocery list. I want my phone to know who’s on the other end of the line, and to only ring when it’s someone I want to talk to, and not the fake Canada Revenue Agency scam call (which I’ve received 12 times today and counting.)

Bring on the window-washing robots. Send me the automated lawn-mower. Ship ’em direct, and rush the delivery!

Image credit: Andy Miccone/Flickr