Life, Leadership, and Football

This is something that I have been thinking a lot about lately, and it is an idea that has helped me grow more than I could have imagined over the last three years or so. To begin with, let me just say that I have never considered myself to be a "creative" person. Generally, I would rather color inside the lines of a picture that has already been drawn than draw my own picture. Now, having said that, I would make absolutely sure that my coloring job would be meticulously done. I am a hard worker, and I like to think that I am a pretty decent problem-solver. However, "creative" has never been a word I would use to describe myself. That type of thinking was really prevalent in my career for my first eight or nine years as an educator. I have always loved learning new things. I love to read, and I do it as often as I can. I even enjoy professional development (most of the time). To that end, I have been really good at consuming. I listen and apply with the be

Those little red circles can haunt you! Last week my wife and I decided to stay off of social media for the entire week, and you know what happened? The world kept right on going, and I'm not sure anyone even noticed we were gone except for the two of us. Isn't that amazing?! It sounds silly to say something like that, but if you look at the way most of us stay CONSTANTLY plugged into our various devices, you might think that the fate of the world actually depended on our next tweet or status update. As a culture, we have become consumed by technology. I never thought I would fall into that trap. For the longest time I fought it. In fact, I have been late to the party on just about every social media platform because I have been so darn stubborn. People were blowing up Facebook, and I was just starting to text. Then Twitter took off, and I was just figuring out how to update my Facebook profile pic (I'm still rockin' the same one I put up 6 years ago when I crea