Category: Follow Friday

2020 has been a year for the history books for sure. There’s a joke I saw on the internet that said when kids go to college to study history in the future. If they choose to have an emphasis on 2020, they will need to specify which quarter they are going to focus their studies on.

As we roll into the end of November and those of us in the United States get ready to celebrate a non-traditional Thanksgiving I keep hearing, “I can’t wait for 2020 to be over.” The realist in me wants to ask these folks what do they expect will magically happen on January 1, 2021, but out of love, I keep my mouth shut. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to put 2020 behind me, but I sincerely feel like we’re in for a long haul, we have a long road ahead of us and there will be a lot of work for those of us who lead to help others as we come out of this pandemic.

With how heavy this year has been, humor has been absolutely necessary. That’s where Julie Nolke comes in. Julie is a Canadian actress and comedian that used her quarantine to bring her craft to others via YouTube. I haven’t watched many of her videos outside of her Explaining the Pandemic to my Past Self series but the few I have are just as funny.

On this final Friday before Thanksgiving, I want to spread a little joy through humor to those of you reading my blog, and I’ll start by sharing Julie’s pandemic videos. Enjoy and have a great Thanksgiving!

I’m going to apologize in advance for the swear words, sorry…

Follow Julie Nolke: YouTube | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram

Follow Friday posts are posts where I highlight someone I follow as a way to promote and encourage other people.

The email said, “What in the world are you doing?”

At that point in May 2018, I had been traveling a lot, somewhere in the ballpark of 4 or 5 trips within the span of a few weeks, which meant I was reading A LOT and had been churning through books and making a lot of updates to Goodreads which triggered almost daily updates to Jane Gasdaska. She had taken one of the status update emails from Goodreads and forwarded it to me asking how in the world I had been reading so much lately.

I first met Jane when she was the keynote speaker at an internal tech conference at Phillips 66 in 2014. At the time Jane was a leader within our commercial organization and was a great fit for what we wanted as a keynote speaker. As a member of the core leadership team, I was given the opportunity to go to dinner with our IT leadership team sponsors including our CIO as well as Jane and her assistant. We had a great dinner out with a lot of great conversation, and Jane revealed her I ♥ IT shirt (pictured above). The tech conference was a hit and Jane did a phenomenal job as our keynote speaker. At some point during the conference, it came up that Jane and I were both avid readers, and a couple of years later we connected on Goodreads.

Fast forward to 2018, I read the email mentioned above as I was waiting for one of my co-workers to check out of the hotel in Vegas where I had been a speaker at the ServiceNow Knowledge18 User Group Conference, a final commitment from my previous role in the Customer Support Technology group at Phillips 66. I shot Jane a quick response apologizing for blowing up her inbox and explained that due to my new role as well as commitments from my previous role I had been traveling quite a bit, and I asked how she had been and how she was liking her new (and current) role in Organizational Change Management. That led to a quick touchpoint phone call and an ongoing mentor/mentee relationship where she and I touch base every couple of months to trade stories on how things are going, anywhere I might be stuck, what we’re reading, the pulse in the organization, and the occasional technical troubleshooting that I provide for her. It has been a great two-way street that I look forward to as I see the appointment coming on my calendar.

As a Phillips 66 employee, I am able to receive her Monday Moment blog posts via internal email, but she also posts them on her blog every week. You should check them out on her blog.

Follow Jane Gasdaska: Twitter | LinkedIn | Goodreads | Blog

Follow Friday posts are posts where I highlight someone I follow as a way to promote and encourage other people.

Back in 2012, I had a pretty major back episode that required disc decompression therapy to allow me to get back to some semblance of normal. There was a combination of events that led to the episode, but one of them was a very high-intensity plyometric workout. After that episode, I realized a lot of things I had been taught about lifting, working out, and fundamental strength, as well as many of the underlying assumptions in my lifting, were incorrect which had led to a relatively speaking weak core. As I was laying on the decompression table day after day, I resolved to challenge all of my assumptions which resulted in me searching out websites like T-Nation where they post a lot of content for seasoned lifters who are looking to up their workout game. I already mentioned Lee Boyce last week, this week I want to introduce you to Paul Carter. When you first see his pictures, you realize this dude is JACKED and after watching a few of his lifts on Instagram, you realize it’s not all show, the man is a BEAST. But what I feel really sets Paul apart is he is not afraid to shy away from taboo subjects like emotional & mental health. Subjects that you typically don’t find talked about much and he’s not afraid to call anyone out. For example, a little over a month ago, he posted this little gem.

But he’ll also post these as well!

These have been some of my favorite posts of his lately. If I have learned anything the last few years (since Michael died) it is that strength looks a lot different than what I thought it looked like. Loving so deeply you get emotional is strength, real men do cry, and I’m worth loving.

Finally, I also appreciate posts like these two, they’ve really gotten me thinking recently.

On the last one, he said something in the caption that really struck home for me (relevant parts pasted below).

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Words are incredibly important and play a huge role in allowing us to connect and communicate and get to know each other.

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But if you want to cut through the bullshit about what’s really important to someone then simply look at their behavior. And see if the words and actions consistently line up.

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If someone gets up at 4 a.m. to train, and runs off to work two jobs then as you can imagine, training is important to them.

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If someone tells you that it’s important to them to lose fat, and get in shape, but won’t stay on plan with their diet, training, sleep, etc, then what are they really saying?
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I don’t know how many times I’ve said, “I’m trying to lose weight.” when let’s be honest, if I was really trying to lose weight, my behavior would be different. So there it is, one of the things I respect about Paul is he challenges me to be a better me and I need to be hungry for awhile…

P.S. – the dude has EPIC cheat meals, but he’s earned them 😁.

Follow Paul Carter: Yoke Squad | Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

Follow Friday posts are posts where I highlight someone I follow as a way to promote and encourage other people.