2 Years of Posts, Part 1: A Love/Hate Relationship

I only have a month left in my service, which means I've been in country for over two years.  And in those two years, I've written 239 blog posts.  Thats a lot of writing about one's service in country.

I've been looking back over what I've written as I look for some closure to a two year chapter of life.  There's some pretty bad writing in there, but there's also some pretty good posts as well.  As I wrap up my two years, I thought it would be fun to post selections from some of my favorite posts written and give a little commentary on them now that I have a year or so of perspective.  I've picked 5 posts and I'll post one a week.

A is for Azerbaijan, B is for Baseball

A is for Azerbaijan, B is for Baseball, posted June 9th, 2011

We approached the field like every sports movie ever made featuring a rag-tag group of kids. And just like every first game played in those movies, we got slaughtered. I mentioned that our team only had about half the rules down. Baseball is an incredibly complicated game and our team just had begun to understand where shortstop stands and which base they'll throw to; we had to save concepts like tagging the base after a fly out or force outs for game two preparation.

In this post I described the very first tournament (and game) for the Khachmaz Maximum.  Baseball was definitely a project I was roped into.  But as time passed I found myself enjoying it more and more.  As a teacher it was rare for me to interact with children in a fun way; a teacher is not played with, a teacher is respected.

Throughout my service I would oscillate between loving and hating baseball.  I knew that I 'enjoyed' it, but it was also a ceaseless pain.  Baseball was the equivalent of a toddler, of course you love it-but that doesn't stop you from wanting to throttle it.  Curiously, my love for baseball depended on how it fit into my day, the more time I had to dread practice the more it annoyed me.  Once practice was switched to 9:30 in the morning, I loved it.

Despite my feelings of love or hate in service, after service I'll remember baseball fondly.  Its an activity that will be easy to talk about with Americans.  What could sound more 'Peace Corps' than teaching kids to play baseball?  Just this week, we received team shirts from Kelsey's sorority; real baseball shirts with Khachmaz Maximum emblazoned on the front, they look amazing and will be an amazing souvenir to take home with me.

Two Years In, Two Months Out

The Plan of Attack

On September 24th I purchased my ticket home to Dallas.  As coincidence would have it, September 24th also marked my two year anniversary in Azerbaijan.  Two years ago, I arrived in Baku with my head as filled as my suitcase with ideas of how I would make a change in this country for the best.  26 months later, on November 16th, I'll be making a 20 hour journey home wondering how permanent those changes might be.

I certainly had big plans.  Recently I came across an Excel spreadsheet that made me cringe.  Written during pre-service training, it very neatly planned out my entire two years of service.  Dividing service into 6 month blocks it highlights the projects I would execute, the community members I would involve, even the life skills I would be teaching.  I didn't even know my community yet.  Its both a cute and embarrassing display of neuroticism and arrogance.

Really, as service closes I'm most enjoying the smaller items, rather than the larger projects.  I'm glad to make those giant checkmarks over things like PSN training or TEDx but I'm happier simply attending lessons and spending time with my teachers.  I certainly look forward to finishing the next to-do, but I look forward to the next dinner at Tamilla's or next game of Nard with Elvin more.

On a different topic, this week I also launched Top 3 Apps, my new iPhone app company.  My first app is a useful daily priority minder called 'Top 3: Track Your Priorities'.  I'm really proud of it and find it to be quite helpful (I use it everyday).  It's free to download and I'd really appreciate you checking it out.  I've been working on this project for a while and I'm excited to finally share it with the world.

Exciting News: Announcing Top 3 Apps

I hope you've been enjoying my posts over the past two years (yes, as of yesterday, its officially been 2 years).  In these two years I've written about joys and anxieties, observations and frustrations, activities and future plans.

Regarding the latter category, I'm really excited to finally share one of the projects I've been somewhat-secretly been working on: Top 3 Apps.  In the last few months I've begun developing apps for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and other iOS glowing rectangles.  And, my first one is finally in the App Store.

Its called 'Top 3: Track Your Priorities' and is a simple, effective, daily priority app.  Each morning it prompts you to write your Top 3 priorities for the day.  Throughout the day it will check in with you to help you keep your focus.  Finish them off?  Congrats! Top 3 won't bug you for the rest of the day.

I've been using it throughout testing for the past month and I've found it to be extremely useful.  Volumes of books on personal management and leadership discuss how important it is to establish your priorities early in your day and this app is explicitly designed to help you do that.  Download it HERE

I'd really appreciate if you check it out (ie: downloading it).  Its completely free.  I'm pretty confident that you will find it pretty useful.  Certainly feel free to spread the love too.  I genuinely believe that this is a universally useful application and many people can derive benefit from it.  Its free, so there's no cost to use it, and it helps out yours truly a lot.

Each day, identify your Top 3 Priorities and get what's most important to you done.

Reminder alarms to help you stay on track.  Already finished-Top 3 will leave you alone.

Customize when Top 3 checks in with you.

Different Thinking At TEDxXaçmaz

A significant portion of my service in Azerbaijan has been focused on developing different types of thinking with Azeris.  I work with teachers at school, encouraging them to take a more student-centric approach in their lessons.  In the teacher trainings Kelly and I have been doing around Azerbaijan, we work with high-level teachers develop secondary skills like presentation skills and agenda setting so that they can begin to share the activities and lessons they've perfected with other teachers in their region.  Or in this year's camp planning, from meeting one I encouraged our camp director to begin developing next year's camp director to take the reins.

Success isn't necessarily guaranteed in this approach, but when success does happen I feel that there is a much greater impact; more than an activity taking place, there is true personal growth.  Sometimes it means the project falls flat.  But other times, it means the community member makes a giant leap forward in their own confidence.  This is my favorite way to work in Peace Corps.

Supporting the idea of thinking in different ways is TED.  For those of you who are not familiar, TED is an annual conference that brings together some of the most interesting and creative people to speak on anything they find inspiring.  Talks range from building robotic birds to fixing state school systems to reforesting deserts to protecting the earth from asteroids.  There are 1000s of them at TED.com.  Furthermore, TED also will license their brand so that you can hold an independently organized TED conference, named TEDx.

A few months my back a friend of mine in Azerbaijan mentioned that he was really getting into TED talks.  In the course of our conversation I brought up how I always thought it would be a cool project to do a TEDx event in Azerbaijan.  Apparently he had the same thought and we set about to investigate what it takes to hold a TED event.  And it turns out, it doesn't take much.  There are certainly a bunch of rules to follow, but in terms of actually executing the event its pretty easy.  Five months pass and this past weekend, TEDxGǝncǝ and TEDxXaçmaz were held.

It was really cool to host a TEDx event.  Almost all of the talks we held in Xaçmaz were prerecorded videos selected from the TED website.  This had the advantage of subtitles and it allowed our event to be in both English and Azerbaijani.  Some friends of mine came and a bunch of girls from Lannea's clubs came and it was wonderful to see eyes widen and gasps of amazement as each talk went on.

TEDxXaçmaz was divided into three categories: Our World's Future, Our Community's Future, and Our Own Future and in each category we had a couple videos.  After each category there was a brief discussion break where people talked about the videos they had just seen and the ideas they had just heard.  The conversation was animated and had a lot of variety, Azerbaijani housewives talking with students,  American PCVs talking with business owners.  It was a small group but they really enjoyed it.

I told Dustin (the PCV I worked with) how appreciative I was to have another driver of this project to help me stay focused.  We're pleased it was well received and both of us have a dorky pride in being able to list 'organized a TEDx' on our resume.  I'm also extremely glad to have had one more chance to work with the Azeris who helped put this together.  My co-organizer was an entrepreneur named Rashad and he really did so much of the work.  He created the logo, managed the facebook group, selected many of the talks, and more.  He mentioned how grateful he was that I helped him through this and I told him I think he had it reversed and really it was he who had done the lion's share of the work.  And then I told him that he better email me when I'm in the states to tell me of his next TEDx event.

Simulate Your Own TEDxXaçmaz

Interested in TEDxXaçmaz but can't travel around the world to attend it!  Well you don't need to.  Check out the program below and catch up with all the intelligencia in Khachmaz.  TEDxXaçmaz will introduce a wide variety of ideas about the future, whether an individual's future life, a communities future existence, or the future for our world.

Our World:

Pranav Mistry: The thrilling potential of SixthSense technology

Phil Plait: How to defend Earth from asteroids

Our Community:

Gordon Brown: Wiring a web for global good

Bunker Roy: Learning from a barefoot movement

Ourselves:

Matt Cutts: Try something new for 30 days

Richard St. John's 8 secrets of success