A friend recommended "House Rules" by Jodi Picoult, so part of January was spent immersed in listening to that. (I don't recommended borrowing the 17 CD set from the library as I did. Download an audiobook online instead and save yourself some grief in trying to get it to play!) The main character in this book is a teenage boy diagnosed with Asperger's, and it was rather neat to find I could relate to a LOT in this novel. I would recommend it to anyone who is not familiar with the traits that can lead to this diagnosis. Bit of a scary read as well though, as it is a compelling reminder that it is very important that police officers are trained to understand the challenges that can be experienced when trying to communicate with someone with Asperger's traits. If you read this, i expect you will be on the edge of your seat as you wonder if the boy murdered his Social Literacy teacher or not. I won't spoil the ending here!
Following this, I moved on to reading "A Seat at the Table" by Mark Schwartz. If you are working with technology and looking to understand Agile and DevOps more, this is a good one for leaders. Mostly in this one I've picked up on the idea that IT folks need to stop writing "requirements" and instead focus on documenting the "business outcomes" we want to achieve in order to inspire developers into action. We should not "require" that developers create specific deliverables, but instead talk about the outcomes we want to achieve and let creativity take over from there. We are moving faster and faster away from Waterfall approaches in project management, to a world where the vision is that someday we'll have developed so much automation that we'll live in a world of NoOps.. where people are no longer needed to operate things anymore. You can perhaps imagine that where I work is doing some pretty interesting things now - focused on new ways to automate our world!
Now, with all that complexity in my work life, I've found myself physically and mentally worn out at night. Time to focus on spirit then, I decided! What better way to do that than to tackle the Bible? Yikes! I have tried this before, but I generally made it only a few pages into the book of Genesis and gave up. Of course, I've read passages as directed in church and for the Sunday School curriculum, but I've never managed to read it cover to cover. Has anyone?! I suppose many have, but this book is so tedious to read, so kudos to you if you did this!
I'm not giving up though... I discovered there are free audio book readings for the Bible, too, so I've been listening to "The Book of Genesis - NIV Audio Holy Bible - High Quality and Best Speed - Book 1" by The Two Preachers. This is still a bit tedious, but also I've found some of it quite interesting. Now I can understand how Bible study groups come to be! My takeaway so far is that Genesis is a great reminder that, while things are pretty challenging in our world now, we have certainly come a long way as well to improve. I woke up a few nights ago with my brain trying to draw a picture. Thankfully, a simple Google search turned up multiple versions of this picture, such as this one: https://www.adamandevefamilytree.com/store/products.php?product=THE-ADAM-AND-EVE-FAMILY-TREE-WALL-CHART. No wonder I was finding this tedious to read! Most of the book of Genesis is focused on words to describe this picture, where it seems men would "lie down" repeatedly with women and had many, many offspring, provided many names I've never heard before, and they lived much longer than we do now well. I'm nearly through this Book 1, happy to find as well that I've enjoyed learning a few things... I now have renewed understanding of where Israel and Iran apparently began, and about Joseph and his "technicolour dreamcoat", and I'm interested to hear more of this famous story in the order it has been compiled. Want to join my online Bible study book club? If so, listen to this audio book and share your thoughts.
What are you reading now?
