Hey everyone, it’s Whatever Wednesdays again. Today is just a short post about “Stepping Out of your Comfort Zone.”

Stepping Out of your Comfort Zone

My daughter used to love LEGOs, like a lot. She wanted to build them everyday. However, she got older and found other things to play with and LEGOs kind of fell by the wayside. Fortunately, I still tried to keep track of which “good” LEGOs were on sale that I thought she would like and built a backlog. My assumption was that she would eventually come back to them, because LEGOs are awesome.

I think what happened is that she kind of hit a wall after going through the DUPLOs and LEGO Junior stages. When she was 4 and 5, the sets that were interesting to her were around the 7+ level, and the ones “her level” just weren’t interesting to her. As such, it became frustrating to her to have to always ask me or my wife for help.

Time passes, kids get older, but LEGOs are the kind of thing that grow with you. My son, Lucas, loves LEGOs — but not so much the building, but more of the playing with them and breaking (and then trying to fix) them. In general, he loves Ninjago, NEXO Knights, Avengers, and The LEGO Movie stuff. As of late, he likes to spend most of his time after getting his shower playing LEGOs in my office. He really enjoys creating his own story about each character, and who is a bad guy and who is a good guy — and why.

This was good for Kylie since she saw him every night playing so happily that I think she decided to give LEGOs a try again.

What did she do?

Well, she decided it was time for her to start on the Heartlake City Resort:

You may remember I posted about this way back in July – Lazy Lego Days.

She chose it way back then, but it’s just been sitting in my office in plain view for months now. Then all of the sudden a few days ago she decided she wanted to build it. She asked me if she could do it since it says ages 7-12 and was concerned it would be too hard for her. However, I assured her I’d be there if she needed help, and I’m muchhhhh older than that.

After all that she set to work on bag 1. Things have changed a lot since Kylie was 4 or 5. Her ability to follow the directions and focus is a lot better. Additionally, she understands when she makes a mistake much earlier and asks for help a lot sooner. All things considered, she’s set her mind to finishing one bag a night (there are 7 bags total). For the most part, she’s stuck to it and she’ll be so proud when it’s all done and she did all by herself.

She stepped out of her comfort zone and even though it was more difficult for her, she tried hard and will succeed. This makes me very happy and her fulfilled.

What about you?

Well, this website was my first foray into stepping out of comfort zone. So far, it’s been ok and I think I’ve done a good job with providing content everyday which was my goal.

However, as of late, my new thing “outside my comfort zone” is to try to get a stake pool going for Cardano. I’ve mentioned crypto before, but I don’t think it’s for everyone and I’m ok with that. That said, I do believe it has a future, I’m just not sure exactly how it will be implemented.

So, for now, I’m trying to figure out how to run my own stake pool. While for many, something like this is easy — for me, it’s pretty hard. I haven’t used a command line interface since the days of MS-DOS and I’ve never really used Linux before. However, it’s been interesting so far.

Right now, everything is just in beta and the software being utilized is not even in the 1.0 phase yet. I’ve been testing with version 0.6.5 and 0.7.0 rc1, rc2, and rc3 (rc stands for release candidate). It’s been a bumpy ride and I’ve been having some issues with getting things to work — sometimes things work and I have no idea why — and sometimes I think I have it set up all correctly and it doesn’t work at all. Like many things in life, it’s a work in progress and I’m learning as I go. However, I’m committed to learning how this stuff works because I do want to run my own stake pool someday.

If anyone is interested in learning, you can start here: Shelley testnet

Long story short, I think that “Being uncomfortable inspires growth.”

Update: While I did learn a lot of Linux and running a Stakepool, ultimately a much more tech savvy colleague of mine took it over and runs it. I just stake my small amount of ADA to his pool. (Aloha Cardano)

TL;DR

Kylie stepped out of her comfort zone to try to tackle newer, more difficult LEGO sets.

I stepped out of my comfort zone to try to learn how to run a stakepool.

Being uncomfortable inspires growth.

-Sensei

Agree? Disagree? Questions, Comments and Suggestions are welcome.

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