via Character Writing Exercises
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Author: Mars D. Gill
From an early age I wanted to make connections with people from across the globe. Allowing emotions to escape the deep recesses of one’s mind, and be spilled into a sheet of paper for the world to read lays an opportunity for reader and writer to combine in a nameless bond, one of oneness, and intrigue. It bares a private part of the writer for all to see. It is daunting and exciting. If a written word can dissipate the worry from another heart, if a written word can bring to a face a smile or a tear, then that connection is complete, and a word shatters the physical distance and brings souls together in harmony and joy. This is my dream, only a dream at the moment.
When I was 15 years old, we got a new English teacher. She spoke so beautifully and clearly and made me want to be a better person. Despite my age-old struggle with language(s), I was fascinated by the world of writing. My teacher inspired me to be a constant memory keeper. I feel at some level she taught me how to think.
Now years later, I am blessed with a career and a family that keeps me busy. However it is that 15-year-old in me that is knocking on my heart and via this little personal web site, urging for outlet for my life-long aspirations of writing and as well as begging for validation of all the dreams, old and new that just do not go away. So, here I am on word press with my own website to see where my dreams take me.
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It is Okay to Cry Out Loud
My two-year-old had a particularly rough Monday.
First, in the wee hours of the morning, it is raining and dark. He is in his school clothes, strapped in his car seat. In front of his daycare, we find out the daycare is closed forcing me to take a day off work.
At home, he and I stare at each other’s face with confusion on what we should do with one other.
The first response from a distracted parent…
I turn the TV on, snuggling with him in bed as I flip open the lid of my laptop. Ten minutes later, he is tired.
“Mama, turn the TV off.”
I look at him like, “dude, what is wrong with you?” I do not allow screen time and here, I have opened the floodgates to it, enjoy!
I turn the TV off. We stare at one another. He pulls on my hand. He is leading me down the stairs. He wants to start this day that refused to begin with the school closure.
I call the gym. They have a play area where the caretakers are well familiar with him and he with them. It would provide the outlet the little guy needs. They have room. Yay!
My boy and I ride in my aging mini-van to the gym. He is the happiest I have seen in the day. An hour later, I return dripping in sweat. My lemonade (from the lemon life threw at us)!
He is waiting for me. The caretaker says, “He was just not the same without his older brother and sister (who are at school,) and just waited for you to return.”
We come back home and the garage door refuses to open. I reach for my keys, and the home key is missing on my key chain. I circle the home to see if my carelessness would pay off with an open door. Nope.
My boy waits patiently as I try for another fifteen minutes for the garage door to open. The garage door tends to stick and not open on rainy days. I struggle with it.
After a half hour, a memory returns to me. I had taken the key off while getting my car serviced. Five minutes later, I feel it buried in my purse. I hop out in joy. Open the front door. I am in my home, at last.
I walk to the garage and press the garage button from inside. It refuses to budge. Then, I realize what happened.
In America, where only massive storms force the power out, there is no power in my home on this sunny day. I am shocked. I go back to the front door where a neighbor is walking his dog.
He confirms he is without power too. Anyway, my boy and I are at least inside our own home.
I heat his lunch on the stove instead of the micro. He eats it silently. The only fuss he is making is not leaving me alone, even for a second. Not playing. Not doing anything fun. Just silent.
Moments later, he rises with his water cup to the water dispenser. Presses the down button and there is no water.
And, the calm and composed baby of mine, slaps the cup to the floor and bursts out crying!
I hold him and explain to him that we have no power and hence, no water. He leaves the rest of his food untouched and goes to bed.
The light comes back in an hour when I shower after my sweaty workout from the morning. But, to my little one, I must say…it is okay to be calm. But when life slides down a slippery slope and nothing seems right, it is okay to cry it out too. Be human.
Here is to the comfort of electricity we enjoy in the US! And the ability to cry out loud on rough days.
I am an Agile Coach. I believe in the tenets of Agile and am sold on its value. I enable others to be Agile. However, due to misconceptions and bad applications of Agile, examples are plenty when Agile has hurt where it was meant to help.
One of the contrasts of Agile and Waterfall, is in the amount of documentation. Agile has taken the Use Case documents, the architectural and technical detail design documents and scattered the plethora of information into series of user stories. A user story is a tangible unit of work resulting in user delight in the form of a new capability. It takes user pain away in a meaningful way even if it is a small functionality such as radiating the status of an application throughout the process (on a website).
The detailed requirement documents of waterfall take months in which timeframe paradigms supporting the requirement change. It is the reason why in Agile, we make requirements golden at the “Last Responsible Moment” in smaller, bit-size chunks. All this works wonderful in theory. In application if not done right, the machine breaks down. Listed below are Agile process smells or pitfalls hurting teams because of improper application or misunderstanding of the practice.
Vertical Slices of work in Siloed Component-Based Model
I repeat, “a user story is a slice of work resulting in user delight.” User could care less there are ten APIs to be built or which technical framework programmers must use. User only concerns in the capabilities they wish to receive from the product. Does the word processor I am using allow me to type my blog and share it in one click?
All good so far. It is the reason why we create stories vertically to focus on the impact to the end customer. This good intention gets punished in an organization fostering experts in niche skills instead of full stack developers. Let me rephrase. When software teams are built around key types of skills, the web service team, the front-end team building the UI, the database team, the Java team, the SQL team, the JS team…there is an awful number of handoffs, and consequently, waste in the system. This model produces experts in the field (DB guy, network gal…) with idea that experts will take requirements and deliver them in a mighty pace. It is a gain received at the risk of self-created silos. When the developed experts leave, they take with them their knowledge that should have been spread around to begin with.
So, in these organizations with horizontal teams a vertical backlog (for the end customer) results in stories with large cycle time (because teams need to wait for “the other guy” to commit, finish and deliver before they can). Large cycle times equal large feedback loops. Large feedback loops result in potential missed opportunities of improving fast and pivoting. Sometimes, it is okay. A lot of time, not. A vertical backlog for such an organization is dragging the horse to the well, but horse will not drink until all its buddy horses arrive.
Reduced documentation = no documentation
Delivering potentially shippable software in two-weeks cadence can be mind-boggling and chaotic (until it becomes muscle memory). Sometimes in the whirlwind of it all, hallway conversations take the place where key decisions on a user story are made. Agile is big on co-location and hallway collaborations, let me be transparent. Synergy existing in people eating together, coding together, storming together, and getting back together is priceless. But a hierarchal organizational structure with borders, requires alignment of understanding across those borders. For example, most large organizations have a separate end-to-end testing teams. When a user story is committed to be worked upon does the PO or the developer on the team or the end-to-end tester, do all of these cross-functional units perceive the requirement with one lens? Are all of them included in these hallway conversations? Same argument for distributed teams.
In the waterfall world, I can confidently say the documentation is organic because it is instituted and reviewed multiple times. So, where its drawback lies in the lack of speed to respond to change, the pro is requirements when well-written are clearly understood and prescriptive. Can it hinder innovation from the techies? Sure. But the business knows what it wants and has taken the pain to write it out in great detail.
So, beware that becoming Agile does not mean compromising on the quality of documentation. It simply changes when you are focused on refining what.
Anyone can write a user story
I have coaches highlight the bottleneck (waste) in the system in numerous Agile trainings. Look, if you wait on one gal, the product owner, to finish writing all your user stories for a team of 8 developers, then you may go slower.
So, the whole team should be trained on writing user stories. The whole team should be trained and empowered to write user stories. However, there are pitfalls here to watch for.
Too many cooks spoil the stew. Or a clear voice missing in the product, or have you heard of the bystander effect? When lots of people are standing and witnessing the same wrong, everyone thinks someone else will act, not me. End result, no one responds. Everyone thinks everyone/others can write stories, so not me. I have seen this one too many times.
So, I differ from my fellow agilists in this advice. I feel Product Owner should have a clear, crisp vision. The vision needs to be disseminated from the PO to the teams in how features are broken into stories and what each story entails. However, the PO should not limit the innovation of the team and encourage questions and collaboration to improve the requirements and embody the whole team spirit. If the PO is absent, the team should feel self-sufficient to step in, but the team writing the stories does not replace the vision guiding the product.
Because when the PO takes the back seat and depends on the team to self-organize in creating and writing their own stories, result is never good, I assure you.
Acceptance criterion can change mid-sprint
Agile puts processes in place enabling the team to respond to change and incorporate customer feedback, etc. However, the last responsible moment as a rule for acceptance criterion formulation is ahead of the sprint start, period. Changes mid-sprint should be exceptions and not the norm. It is unfair to accept the development team to pivot with their heads spinning round the clock. The stability is desired within the sprint.
All these problems are experienced when Agile is misunderstood or a sentiment is abused to an extreme end. I am sorry to inform that Agile is not a cure all for the documentation. It does not mean crappy or no documentation. We are still obligated to do a top-notch job. Nothing changes there no matter the methodology.
Featured Photo by Tom Pumford on Unsplash; Inline Photo by David Travis on Unsplash
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When Fireworks Light the Sky
At the #10mincon, word got around that fireworks will light the sky if the Reds win the game. But when the fireworks crackled over the John A Roeblin Suspension Bridge, we were no longer sure if Reds won the game or not. We certainly had won. That was clear.
For greater part of my life, I remained away from Facebook. Because the people I loved were right in front of my eyes. In 2015, I violated my cardinal rule and joined Facebook with solitary intention of meeting fellow writers like me, better writers than me.
And, here I was. The year was 2018.
Irony called my life happened.
While three of my books collected electronic dust itching to smell paper of a bound book, I attended my very first writers conference, #10mincon, organized by a Facebook group called #10minutenovelists (founded by Katherine Grubb) 🙂
That morning, I kissed goodbyes to my little ones, and off I went on vacation (from all the joys of parenthood) to Covington, KY. It was a happy journey clouded by a nightmare from the night before where I was unable to hand out business cards to a single person in the entire conference. Studded amidst the rolling green hills, appeared Cincinnati, Ohio separated from Kentucky by Ohio River. I bridged the distance from Ohio to Kentucky in a minute to arrive at the Embassy Suites hotel.
What followed was unprecedented. I met people who were just like me, eager to mingle and eager to share their knowledge. But I did not know that when I arrived.
When I first entered the room, I carried in me a lonely heart of a mother who missed the laughter of her little ones and stared at the countless heads of strangers from the back of the room. I found an empty row when Pam Humphrey and Glenda Thompson signaled me to join them instead.
With Glenda and Pam
The lectures that followed from Katherine Grubb, James Scott Bell, Donald Maass, and Janice Hardy require thought and many more blogs to capture. It was intense, and it was worth every penny I spent to get there.
I would like to thank the entire team of #10mincon who made it possible, who put their heart in every little detail from inspiring speeches to getting the highest quality speakers to us to the boxed lunch souvenirs on the day of the departure.
I even won a free book from my new friend, Pam Humphrey called the Blue Rebozo! Not a coincidence.
Fireworks crackled that night befitting the emotions of all present in the conference. It was not an end but a new beginning.
I returned richer, bolder and purposeful. Not only did I bring back new lessons but new friends as well who had shared personal stories over the span of two days.
With my new writer friends (Gretchen Grey-Hatton next to me) and Donald Maass – the author that first inspired and influenced my writing through the “Breakout Novelist” book.
To the 10 Minute Novelist team, Bravo!
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Undefined Feelings
Impeccable joy like insurmountable sorrow
Bow down to one, worry about the other
How in the world is it possible
To be so high or so low without altering reality?
If all that I perceive is through the lens of my mind
If all that I feel is through the tap of feelings
Feelings burrowed deep inside begging for words
Only felt in broken smiles and suppressed tears
Feelings in search of words
Feelings that can only be smelled
In the muddy slush created by a rapid downpour
Or touched in the moistness of a cheek or muddiness of vision
The world remains intact, out of order
What is the purpose of those feelings?
If they mean nothing or everything in one instance
Only conjoined in an incomprehensible paradox
Conflicting with its own existence
In the middle of crowd, lonely as a midnight street
Or alone as a night-guard, but beaming with joy
Suspended in time as an unfinished thought
A life lived a quarter at a time
Wondering if it were to complete
How rich or devastating the experience
For completion, all footsteps must trot
Meaningless words, wordless feelings
Only for the senses, invisible to the world
The sheer reality shredded of its meaning
Only painted by the undefined feelings
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The Issue of the Other
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Journey Beyond the Headlights
When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a teacher. Teacher craze lasted a few years. When teenage acne took over, I had a distant family friend visit us from the United States. She had an eclectic selection of high-heeled shoes my sheltered eyes had ever laid eyes on. And, she told heroic tales of her experiences being a detective. So, I wanted to be a detective. So, as my wants blended with the winds and went place to place, I too floated from a small town in rural Punjab to a small Midwestern town in the US. Destiny winds continued to sway me around. I found myself in a high-rise in Downtown Chicago in 2007, at Buc, France giving Agile training in 2015, and last summer, I joined Allstate in Chicago land as a Program Manager.
One thing is same in my aged heart from the one that beat in me as a child – desire to get better, anxiety to succeed in life and in career. The burning desire had me chasing “the road less traveled” or simply “the road I wished to travel on.”
I recently changed roles for the third time, I must say, within Allstate in my first year itself. Blame the burning desire inside me that is waiting for the right winds to propel me because all I can see is as far as the headlights of my near vision.
What do I do? I am an Agile Coach, I change people’s behaviors for a living. May I say, I do the same at home as a mother. Beyond the headlights, only lies the ashes from my desire of where I want to go and where I want to be.
For now, I am teaching myself a lesson I have applied all my life. Do the best you can. Give the best you can. And, worry not for the rest. Let’s roll!
Habits make us, shape us, keep us grounded. We follow same routes to work relishing the comfort in the familiarity of repetitions.
But have you ever pondered what makes a vacation so special?
It is the ultimate reset of routines.
But why wait for a vacation to gain a reset. Daily, there are opportunities to do precisely what a vacation gives you. Try these ten ways to break that routine and have the vacation experience right where you are, doing exactly what you do.
- Go where the tourists go
Take that boat tour. Go visit the local museums. Suspend your legs in a lake and watch the ducks float by. Take a picture like a memory keeper of unusual things. That is what tourists do what we do not in day to day. Go to city center, people watch.
- Do something you are afraid of
Break your comfort zones, be it in applying for a more challenging role at work, signing up for a marathon, march for something you believe in. When opportunity knocks on your door and you start to wonder how you would juggle things around or learn a new skill, say yes. Learn that new skill.Can’t think of anything? Go Bungee Jumping or Sky Diving.
- Eat at a new restaurant
Drive to a new restaurant at least once a week. Eaten at all around? Try a new dish or venture beyond your normal miles. Go on a culinary tour – like ice cream shops, coffee shops, frozen yogurt, French bakeries, Greek restaurants…what ever culinary outlet your neighborhood allows. Do not hesitate to expand the boundary in which you normally eat.
- Cook a new recipe
Cooking is cathartic but cooking in a short amount of time because you must, is a chore. Break that chore by trying a new recipe just for the fun of it.
- Take a new route to work
Auto pilot is great. But the awareness you possess while sitting over a giant canyon observing each contour, each hew of sunlight is worth tapping by breaking auto pilot on any given day.Once I took a back road to work because of traffic and the smell of wild spring flowers is still a fresh memory years later. New routes take you out of auto-pilot, force you to notice views we innocently glance over.
- Watch at least one sunrise and a sunset
Instead of waking up at the same time, rise with an alarm on a clear day to just watch the sunrise and do nothing else.
- Read a book for the fun of it
There is solitude in your outer world as you submerge yourself in a book. But your inner world bubbles with the contents of the book. Sometimes, you must dive into another world to escape your own just like watching a movie, and book is the perfect medium.
- Celebrate the little treasures
Why wait for a birthday to celebrate? Celebrate the little things – like when you did something you were afraid of, or you cooked a new dish. In the little celebrations breathes life.
- Write a Journal
Write in your journal. After all, if you have reached number 9 of my blog, you have already altered your life. If you have altered your life, chances are there is lot of emotions inside of the new sights and sounds you have heard. Write. - Take a hike
Tourists hike. Some active people do. But even if you are a couch potato like me, get outside, find a scenic trail and get on it. Do not walk to get your step count in. Walk to gain a new experience.
So, pause and think of all the routines you have grown to be comfortable in. Break them. It will alter your attitude and open new doors of opportunity, I promise.
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Dua – My Love, My Treasure
You take my worries away. You smile and I cry tears of joy. You plant kisses delivering loving ointments to life scars. You are my treasure, my everything, the secret sauce to the essence of my happiness.
The joy of my life, the pillar supporting my back is you, my determined and confident shadow. When Dua makes her mind, there is no turning back, because she is hard working, resilient and razor-sharp focused. She was just born when she earned the title of “my rock.”
So, my darling, have a wonderful birthday and all days of your life. May your life be as full as you make mine. May the love you shower unconditionally bounce back and you live life drenched in it. Happy Birthday, my doll, my treasure. You are five years old.
To be exact, 82 days, two and a half months of interruption equals a summer break.
But who is counting?
I am.
I am a working mother, and with both of us, husband and wife, who do not share the break with their children, summer throws new dodge balls on an already packed schedule. Summer is a uniquely busy time for working parents. Here is why.
Change in schedule
Clockwork schedules are not just for newborns. Adults too are slaves to habits. Summer requires adapting to new drop-off locations with new times and rules. New habits form as old ones are broken, and that can challenge an already busy routine.
Camp locations can be inconvenient
Sometimes, the best camps aren’t the ones near your home unlike the public (or private) schools. Nonetheless, not just adding on to the already long commute (for those like me with a forty-five-minute normal commute), it is also now having to remember the new routes. You can no longer rely on auto-pilot wiring to get to the same places daily. And, as soon as you adjust to the new routine, summer is over.
The uncertainty
Picking the right camp is step number one. A lot can go wrong from the camp selection to living life in the new camp. Do the activities appeal to kids in reality as it did on paper? Does the camp provide the right outlet for the energies little ones burst in? Will they meet nice people? Will they get along?
Often times than not, a child comes home with a fight (especially for my rough and tumble boy). That is followed by lots of tossing and turning in the sleep at night, what to do, and what not to do.
All weeks of summer are not created equal
When all the loose pieces of the summer puzzle fit – the people fit, the work fits, the commute fits … wait, there is another dodge ball.
Summer weeks are created unequal. June is summer school (half days, four days a week). And, rest of the summer are full-time camp – this is true for my situation but will vary from district to district, home to home, decision to decision.
Two weeks could go problem-free and in the next cycle enters, say swimming – chlorine filled, dry unmanageable hair, sun burnt skin and their companion, tears.
Not to mention, THE HOMEWORK
Research has shown that complete interruption in academics has adverse effect on their scores and abilities. So, schools such as mine have not only offered part time summer school (awesome offering) but also sent books worth of homework. What about my plan for home work for my child over summer?
Our elementary school excels in acknowledging that children need to be children. So, they have no homework policy during the school year, a joy because I can choose an activity for our evenings – a music lesson or simply cuddling and sharing tales from our day. Summer is an exception and quite possibly, the antagonist to that policy.
More work in each day – lunch and accessories needed
In the academic year, on any given day, I can ask my kids to get lunch from the cafeteria. All I have to worry about are the funds on their lunch card, an act I can complete from my desk or bed with a click of a button. Not true for a lot of summer camps.
Lunch and healthy snacks are not the only extra items to pack. Washed swimming costumes and towels on swimming days, tennis rackets on tennis days, sunscreen, mosquito repellents, and extra snacks for field trip days. No biggie but another complexity and new routine to incorporate in already full days.
Camps do not cover entire summer
Camps end a few days to a week before the start of the academic year to give their staff a break, I suppose. Parents that have planned well, may have a vacation planned ahead of time and those like me who do not have that extra vacation, hunt for a nanny or alternative for the week. One such week I spent with the nanny calling me every twenty minutes in tears, “Your daughter is crying again, miss. She won’t listen to me.”
Here is to another summer, to change, and to living life in general.