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Showing posts from December, 2024

Lost in Translation

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For the last couple years (with a pandemic pause) I was able to take my minions back to Taiwan. My main goal is to make them long for their Taiwanese/Chinese heritage. To feel rooted in a place that is so far removed from our everyday physical space.  This summer we attended a family camp run by indigenous Tsou people of Taiwan. I heard the word 感動 which translate directly to sensing movement but it is used to express this idea of being moved. But it's so much more than that... One of the young people running the camp spoke about his experience at 18 coming back to his ancestral land to learn the culture and language. If you don't know much about Taiwan indigenous history it parallels with the eradication through cultural genocide in the US native history.  But in the 2016 then President Tsai made a formal apology to the indigenous tribes of Taiwan. She did more than apologies, (https://china.usc.edu/tsai-ing-wen-apology-indigenous-peoples%E2%80%9D-august-1-2016) she put ...

Phone addiction

 There is a lot of talk about phone addiction with teens. I wonder what the research is saying about aging (Gen X) and phones. It completely feeds into my procrastination tendencies. I can't even remember what I use to do when I commit to not doing something. I watched alot of non cable TV? I stared out a window. I've gotten into the habit of deleting and putting on the apps over and over again.  Should I self diagnose? Is this ADHD ? I have been reading and watching documentaries specific to anxiety in teens. As a family we decide we were going to limit and restrict. But I know I do a terrible job modeling. Shockingly our two minions haven't really mentioned it or maybe they did but we were not  paying attention with our nose stuck in our phones.  I have no memory of my parents being present for me when I was growing. Were they just doing a bunch of chores, like what did they do with their time?