Essentialism (XVII): The Uncomfortable Act Of (Not) Choosing: Addendum

 After writing yesterday's post on Essentialism, I had opportunity to speak with my friend Rainbow.

For context, Rainbow has been a friend for just over twenty years now (something like six jobs ago), and as a friend of that long with a friendship that expanded beyond the acquaintances of work that we have so often, she has seen and knows enough about my life and my personality that she has both context and background for the discussions that we have.  As a result, she is a wonderful sounding board for my thoughts and ideas (some of which, to be fair, are indeed harebrained).

During our conversation, I brought up the fact that I was going through this Essentialism project (as that is what is seems to have become), I mentioned yesterday's revelation to myself that I was simply still at the point that while I could identify "Essential" things pretty clearly, I had pulled back from identifying something as a foremost Essential.  And that it bothered me for a reason I could not define.

Her response was "Maybe that is because it no longer serves the same purpose".

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Over the course of my life, I have started and stopped a great many things.  Oftentimes that stoppage simply seems to happen:  one day I am just "done" with a thing.  In that case, the paraphernalia often disappears soon after (once or twice too quickly).  Why, I asked myself (and Rainbow) does this happen?

One reason can simply be that I have nothing else that is interesting to me in the subject or hobby or task; that I have done what I am likely to do.  The second, somewhere more concerning, is that there is more I could do - but it requires an element of effort and dedication that I will not commit to.  Viewed in this light, the question becomes "Why am I giving these things up?"

That "Why" becomes the operative interrogative - and to be fair, something that I have seldom asked of myself when I have discontinued a thing.

The second question, of course, is the purpose that any thing serves.

I tend to be a person that pours more meaning into subjects or tasks than they may merit.  Part of that is still due to the eight year old inside of me that believes that being novel and pleasing people is incredible important - and often in the past my activities have all had that aspect of "Wow, you know/do that?", because as an introvert and nerd and socially awkward child and teenager, this is how you find your way with people.  Part of it can be that I am looking for some deeper meaning out of something that is not designed to provide it. And in some cases, I simply do things because I have done them for a long time.

Moving, of course, upset that last parameter.

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For the things you "identified", asked Rainbow, will they serve the purpose they have?  Or do you need to look at re-examine them?

I gave the matter some thought with her verbally on the phone.  In every instance, I still believed that I had things to learn or do in them, even if it required effort beyond what I tend to dedicate to such things.  

That is fine, she suggested.  But maybe there is no need to commit in such a way to any thing like that yet.  Just continue doing what you are doing, but do it with a sense of being open to things changing or morphing in importance or even something new presenting itself.

That is why friends such as Rainbow are so valuable. They help me to see things that I would not have otherwise seen.

Everything I Do Not Need

This past weekend with my sister and The Outdoorsman in town, we made a stop at The Super Large Bookstore in town.  The Outdoorsman found a bench immediately while my sister and I headed off into the aisles and piles.

I emerged some time later, empty handed.  He looked at me quizzically.  "Nothing that was on my list", I said, "and if it is not on the list, I am probably not buying it.  I am literally out of space."

Later when they came back to the apartment and looked at my shelves, he nodded.  "I see what you mean" he said.

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One of the challenges that has come up as I continue along the path of Essentialism and finding "The Vital Few" is a realization of not only how much I have, but how little I need.

To be fair, I think with the exception of one or two items - probably socks and jeans - I have all the clothing I could possibly use until I die.  I could (and should) re-read every book I own instead of purchasing another one.  I have all the training weapons I will ever need.  And except for the perishable item of bacteria, I have the cheesecloth and molds for almost every kind of cheese.

On and on it goes.

In some things I am trying to more carefully manage what "need" - books is one example.  As mentioned above, there is a list of books.  They are not available through the library (which is the first screen everything now goes through).  They are books that I want to read and have a high chance of re-reading (the second screen everything now goes through).  And so they exist on a Thriftbooks list, patiently waiting both to appear and to be evaluated before I press the "Buy now" button.

If there is a new "book" I want, it goes on the list.  Because I am at the point of only buying from the list.

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How does this tie into the idea of organizing my life and the Vital Few?

As the things I am leaning towards "going big" on continue to emerge, what also emerges is everything else that I am not "going big" on.  Which leads to two questions:

1)  For the Vital Few, what do I really need and do I have it? (For most of the items that are rising to the top of the list, I do.)

2)  For the Trivial Many, I should obviously not be doubling down with more if it is something that I do not intend to follow - but the question then becomes "Why am I keeping what I am keeping"?

That second question becomes a very telling one.  If I am consciously not going to follow up on things, why do I still keep them?  One could argue it is the sunk cost fallacy; one could also argue that it is simply the dragon nature within me that insists I keep my hoard, no matter the fact that it brings me no value or joy beyond being mine.

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An odd thing, this realignment of material values as I sort through the things I really should be focusing on.

Only one things seems certain:  Not only should I have less things by the end of this, anyone hoping to make a living off of me by counting on me to purchase things will be sadly out of luck.

Deny Yourself, Take Up Your Cross, And Follow Me

I received a great deal to think about during my Iaijutsu training last month in Japan - not just on my technique, but about Life.

Yes, about Life in general as well but specifically about my life.  No, I cannot talk about a lot of it (what happens in the dojo stays in the dojo).

The short version is that I tend to be far more focused on myself and my advancement (whatever that actually means) instead of adapting myself to, preserving, and furthering the art.

This in turn sent me down a whole series of considerations and pathways, mostly dealing with myself and my focus on me, the outcome of which was I listed a set of things I needed to change in my thinking:

1)  "I am the author of my life" versus "God is the author of my life."

2)  "I am the saviour of my life (via my own efforts)" versus "Christ is the saviour of my life".

3)  "I am the hero in the life of others" versus "I am a servant in the life of others".

If it is not apparent, I was confronted in a very meaningful way at that time.

Fast forward to two weeks ago, when I found myself in a different church than I had been attending for reasons I was not sure of, other than I needed to go there.  Upon entering the space, I wanted - really needed - to hear something from God.  It seemed a little presumptuous of me to say "God, reveal Yourself" as He is already there.  Instead, I fell back on a phrase that was used by the Desert Fathers of the 4th-6th centuries A.D. when they visited one a teacher or someone they considered holy:  "Give me a word".

Just like that, the words came back "Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Me".

It is stunning enough when you finding something in God's word that speaks to you, personally, in that moment; it is even more so when you "hear" (I can use no other word, although there was no sound) something that is a definitive answer to a question that was asked.

As I drove home that day, I realized that set of words sounded familiar, and not just because I knew the passage where they came from.  Sure enough, there embedded in my notes from training and my deep reflections where the above statements had been written down, was the phrase "Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Me".

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The verse is one that appears in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke).  I quote the verse from Luke here, as it has the most clarity to me:

"Then He (Jesus) said to them all, 'If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me.  For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.  For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself destroyed or lost?'" - Luke 9:  23-25, NKJV  (also in Matthew 16:28-17:9 and Mark 8:34-28)

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And so, I find myself wrestling with the concept of denying myself.

What does that fully mean?  I am struggling with this.  There are certainly very base level practices, practiced by ascetics and Christians throughout the ages:  levels of fasting and other physical practices meant to tame the body - and prayer, always prayer.  Giving in the form of charity, of course: C.S. Lewis noted that if our charities did not somehow pinch not just our luxuries but our basics, we likely are not charitable enough. And a litany of everyday practices meant to get our eyes off ourselves:  humbling of ourselves in the service of others, for example (humility was a matter of consideration this year for more than one reason, apparently).

Still, I struggle. Simple denial of something like food for fasting seems painfully basic and off the mark, for example - although I am pretty sure there is also a simple part of me that does not want to do even that.  But those sorts of physical restrictions, though likely beneficial, do not seem to be the core of what was asked of me.

Do I think something like what has become a fast of sorts from social media and indeed any media is part of it?  I do, although this seems of secondary or even tertiary import except that it pushes me towards having more time and silence in my life.

And so, I continue to fumble my way forward in the dark.

But this one thing I know:  Not once, but twice this year the very specific command "Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Me" has come to the direct forefront of my conscious thought.  Surely this is for a reason.

The question is, how well am I doing that very thing.

The Magic You Are Looking For

As long-time readers of this blog may recall, every training session I have with my headmaster has been one of self discovery - not always good self discovery of course, but self discovery.  

I say "not good".  What I mean is "not good for my feelings", not "not good for correcting myself".  This time, the learning was around my willingness to do the work.

Do The Work is actually the title of a book by Steven Pressfield (he of Gates of Fire fame), the point of which is that in order to make progress, one has to push aside the resistance (The Lizard brain, he calls it) and start doing the things one needs to do to move forward.

And to be fair, that is part of what I was confronted with.  But the other thing, the deeper thing, is simply that I do not fully "do the work" I need to.

Perhaps because I did so well in school (I was, and am, a very good student as the whole "learn/study/test" thing works for my mind), I somehow picked up the belief that not only can I do anything (which is helpful) but that I can do it without necessarily having to invest the time and energy to fully master the thing - to "do the work".  Whether by bouts of intellect or a jovial nature, I have - in more cases than I tend to think - managed to "bend the rules" to do things.  Sometimes that looks a lot like having some but not all of the qualifications to do a thing (like, for example, my current line of work where effectively I have "grandfathered in" simply by the amount of time I have been in it).  Sometimes it is by knowing the outer shell of a thing but not the whole thing, yet projecting as if I do.  Sometimes it is being agreeable and personable and carefully avoiding having to display any actual knowledge.

This manifests itself in a lot of ways.  The most visible is simply making pronouncements based on what I can recall or believe to be true instead of following up to find out the facts.  Sometimes this is me doing things my own way and trying to fit it into the task that I have been asked. Sometimes, it is me simply using a very basic level of knowledge and trying to extrapolate to the more advanced concepts.  Sometimes, this is trying to rush through something I do not know well or fully in hopes that speed will carry me through to the parts I know well.

This all works, of course.  Until it does not.  And, as it turns out, the longer attempt to stay on a glide path instead of a flight path, the more obvious it becomes.

I want advancement in things - Iaijutsu of course in this context, but other things as well.  And I am guilty more times than I care to accept or think that I have attempted to find the easy way, the "magic way", to get it done.   Why?  Because "the work" is often boring.  It is repetitive.  It is time consuming. And progress often does not appear as the noticeable progress that fuels me:  there are no good grades.

Just the work.

But there is a magic to making all of this happen, of course.  It is, as the picture above notes, simply doing the work that I am avoiding.

The odd thing is that I know precisely - for every thing I am not making progress in - what that work is.  It means investing time - and by investing time, it means that I will end up doing less of some things because there is only so much time I have and can invest.

For years I believed there is "magic" to success.  There is; the question is whether I am willing to do the magic - which is everything that I have been avoiding to this point.

Plans, Letting Go, And Time

One of the dangers I am continually reminded of in praying to God is similar to a character in C.S. Lewis' Narnia series where when describing Aslan he is described as a lion, but not a tame one.  The same danger, it appears, happens when you sincerely pray to God for something (or at least, what to me seems sincerely).

God assures us He answers prayer.  What I am finding out - for the 52nd time - is that the prayers fall into the two brackets.  The first is something for ourselves that is superfluous, like a Jaguar automobile (for some reason I have always wanted one). Likely the answer there is "no".  But pray for something like patience or the ability and practice to love your enemies or endurance, and you are likely to get an answer - not in the form of the thing itself but in the form of the ability to exercise patience or loving one's enemies or endurance.

Thus, praying for things has always become a bit of slightly fearful exercise followed by rolling for cover.

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One of the things I have been seeking is simply guidance and direction.  There is a great deal going on (as you all know) and while there is not really a wrong answer, they may be a series of better answers.  On Monday last I prayed for this very thing.  The following day, three things happened:

1) The first was when I arose in the morning.  The Director, working on his doctoral thesis, had a question about history (specifically Spartacus and The Third Servile War).  Modern references he had; did I as a classicist have an idea for sources beyond Plutarch's Life of Crassus?

To be fair, I had to verify with a Wikipedia page, but it turns out I did:  Plutarch's Life of Pompey, Frontinus' Strategemata, and Appian's The Civil Wars were all on my bookshelf to be consulted.  A fourth - Florus' Epitome of Roman History - was not but I was able to find it online for him.

The feeling that I had when 1) I could readily find the references and 2) my friend considers me a "classicist" carried me through rest of the day.  And it reminded that once, long ago during my failed attempt to become a pastor, the alternative career suggested to me was "Classics Professor".

2) In searching for an image for a presentation of a confused path picture (the sort of "How it was supposed to go" versus "How it went" sort of thing), the quote above was one of the first things that came up.

"Well", I thought, "That is extraordinarily weird" - and then went on with my day.  Except I did not, because that thought - give up the life you planned to have the life that is waiting for you - would not disappear out of my head.

3)  One of the folks I follow on Instapic is a gentleman named Father Mike, a Catholic Priest who does pretty good sometimes very funny videos. The video that came up that day was "What do I tell people when they pray for God's direction and will?"

Well, fortunately that was not on my mind at all, or else this would have been fortuitous...

The answer he gave is simply "Take the first step.  And see what happens then."

(I am not sure if it will load - especially if you do not have an Instapic account - but it is here.)

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The bow that tied all of this off came on Friday, with a post by Friend-Of-This-Blog (and occasional famous person) John Wilder on Entitled "Time:  It's The Only Thing You Have".  In it, while discussing the nature of Time as we perceive it, he makes the rather interesting point that as novelty fades, time flows faster for us.

It makes sense, of course.  When we are young, everything is new.  As new things turn to the common place, we pay less and less attention to them; they essentially are on auto-pilot. I can still remember the first route I drove on the first day I drove myself to band camp; I can scarcely remember the thousands of times I commuted back and forth.  

Tied to this idea of novelty, one of his commenters made the sage suggestion to re-invent some aspect of one's self every three to four years.  Why?  For the same reason John suggested:  novelty causes us to pay attention and mark time in a way that the ordinary run of the mill living does not.  

As I pondered this, I realized that many of the times I have "reinvented" myself were not any doing of my own - in fact if anything, I had to be forced into it.  I never intended to work in the industry I am in.  I never intended to move from Old Home.  I never intended to move to New Home.  And I never intended to move to New Home 2.0.  Yet in each case not only was the move a "dot" in my life, it opened up opportunities and experiences I never would have had if I never been pushed out.

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Where does all of this end up?  Three points, I think:

1)  God clearly answered this prayer.

2)  There is clearly an answer to be had here, if I will pursue this quest for direction consistently and just keep taking step after step until I hit a "no".

3)  I need to be open to the fact that what I have "planned" may not be what I really need - or want.

On The Nature Of My Life And Getting Straightened Out

(I cannot specifically attest the existence of the Ascetic Gabriel but Karoulia, as it turns out, is a skete (a small collection of monks of the Orthodox tradition that live in isolation as part of a larger monastery on Mt. Athos in Greece) and really does exist.  More here.

I realized last week (on a Wednesday at around 1630 if that is relevant) that I am on a journey I did not anticipate.  I faintly saw it around 1200 that day but it did not click into place until later.  

The path picks up (I think) sometime around the time of my move when I found myself in many ways very much on my own.  Perhaps it was because of the relative silence or perhaps because of being isolated, I asked God for guidance on a great many things - not only the direction of my life but my very nature.

Important safety tip:  as with praying for patience, these turn out to be the sort of prayers God delights to answer.  But as with patience, perhaps not in the way we anticipated or wanted.  In my case, it has a been a great deal of confrontation about who I am in my core and how much I reflect Christ and His Gospel.

I have been reading a combination of short biographies of lesser known Orthodox monks and clergy, quotes from Columba of Iona, and the Stoic philosopher Epictetus.  What has come through is the following:

1)  I am not nearly as humble as I should be.

2)  I am not nearly as kind as I should be.

3)  I am not nearly as Christlike as I should be.

4)  I am not nearly working as hard on my sinful nature as I should be.

That was a lot of "shoulds" for a Wednesday evening.

The thing that was "impressed" on me (no - there was no visitation or thunder and lightening) was simply the fact that now more than ever - here in this time and this place - Christ wants His witnesses.  Not just witnesses that mention they go to church as part of their regular schedule (although that is super Scriptural and very important) but those who are actual Christlike.

What does that mean?  Two things, I think.  The first is simply that follow the commands of Christ and the apostles.  Those are pretty well laid out in the New Testament (not that we necessarily like them, but they are there).  The second is that we live specifically to the situation where we are truly Christ's representatives, perhaps His only ones.

We all live and work in different places.  We are in different social situations.  In that sense I do not wonder (and am more and more convinced) that application of Christlikeness will be different for each of us - we are tailor-made, as it were, for those situations and those others in our lives.

What is it for me?  I do not fully know but some things that have come to mind are humility, kindness, willingness to serve and be a "soldier on the line" as it were (this is far more difficult than I had anticipated with a change in position and role). 

(Also, just be a better servant as a husband in general.  But I suspect for the married this is always a thing.)

The thing that cemented all this?  The quote above.

C.S. Lewis said it more politely but not any less fervently:

"But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not.  It is not wearied by our sins, or our indifference; and therefore is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins, at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to Him". (Mere Christianity)

I asked the question and God gave the answer.  It is up to me to get on with the tasks at hand.  Or He will happily do it for me - more directly perhaps but also I suspect with more discomfort to myself.

Bookshelf Of Wonders

 "Look at this stuff,
Isn't it neat?
Wouldn't you think my collection's complete?
Wouldn't you think I'm a girl,
A girl who has everything?

- Ariel, The Little Mermaid

One of the first things I did when our stuff arrived - beyond unpacking clothes to give my wardrobe something other than "seven shirts only" look - was unpack some books. Part of this was strategic:  I needed something to anchor the base of the bookshelves. Part of it was personal:  I felt like I needed to have some evidence of my books being present.

As I sat there on my couch, looking at my one full bookshelf (the history/literature shelf), I was overcome with a sense of wonder.  

The wonder, as I thought about it, came from two areas.  The first is that having read works of ancient history which quote works of ancient history that are lost to us, I was overcome with the wonder of the fact that I simply have so much information at my fingertips.  Saying "I have more knowledge at my fingertips that The Library of Hadrian in Athens (which I have been to)" seemed a little over the top, but the fact that all of the works exist in my position certain gives me a leg up on 99% of the population up to the mid-19th or 20th century, when books began to be more commonly available.

The second area came from the fact that it was if I had seen these books again for the first time.

The bulk of these books have been in my possession for years - the earliest ones on this shelf since 1989 (A History of The Crusades by Sir Steven Runciman0 and Osprey Publishing's The Normans, both which date from my time in Ireland.  These books have gathered and sat on this bookshelf, which was near the entry of our house in New Home.  I have walked by them thousands of times without giving them more than passing thought unless I was looking for a specific one.

Now, it is like I see each and every one of them for the first time.  I am reminded that in some cases it has been years since I opened some of these up to read.  

I am also reminded that I could never purchase another book again and still read for years.

Look at this trove

treasures untold

How many wonders can one cavern hold?

Lookin' around here you'd think,

Sure, she's got everything.

If I think deeply enough about it, I realize that I have allowed my life what this microcosm of books represent:  a series of acquisitions and desires for things that I do not own yet, but somehow am convinced that I should.  I justify the need in my mind - I will benefit from this, I will somehow be better/more knowledgeable/"in-sync" if I have this or that.  And too often I acquire the thing, use it once or twice, and then it goes into the closet or onto the shelf, a trophy to be looked at and admired.

I would like to be able to blame "the world" of course, as the world has created a system where nothing is good enough for us except the thing that we do not own.  And that is part of it - but a larger part of it is myself.  If I am honest, I am the gaping maw that cannot be satisfied. I continually "need" things.  

I confuse "need" with "want" more often than imagine.

I've got gadgets and gizmos a plenty

I've got whozits and whatzits galore.

You want thingamabobs?  

I've got twenty.

but who cares,

no big deal,

I want more.

Is there anything wrong with wanting things?  Not at all.  Desiring a thing can motivate us to work hard to achieve it.  Some things we want are things we will use a great deal.  And owning things is not, in and of itself, a bad thing.  I suspect the issue comes when owning them makes them nothing more than the aforementioned trophies on a shelf.

I cannot swear that I will never by another book. But I can swear that I will think long and hard before I do and the reason behind why I am buying it.  And I do fully intend to re-read everything I own.  After all, gathering knowledge without using it is just as bad as not having it at all.

A Lifestyle Not A Hobby Followup

 One of the traps that pontificators - professional or otherwise - have a habit of falling into that they either refuse or fail take to their own advice to others.  The famous phrase "Physician, heal thyself"  falls on deaf ears.  They - we, or me anyway - have a keen eye for seeing the issues in the lives of others but somehow miss the same issue that is operational in their own life.  Or equally as bad, they note something about their own lives which intellectually they agree with but has not impact and leads to no change on their part.

Thus, when I actually make of note something in my life and change it, no-one remains more surprised than I.

One of the outcomes of the entire discussion of A Lifestyle, Not A Hobby (which I am somewhat surprised to find I wrote only a week ago) was that whether or not I had realized it years earlier, I had selected the lifestyle of Iaijutsu - something made plain both by my headmaster's story as well as the realization of what it felt like when that normal habitual schedule of training and class was cut off.  I had done the thing for years, but now it became a conscious choice to continue and get better.

Somewhat to my shock, that simple series of thoughts has actually changed my living style.

Oh, it is in the smallest of ways, of course.  One is trying to be much more conscious about my training sessions and making the most of them in terms of time and focus.  Another are those secondary activities which support that primary activity, things like ongoing Japanese study and weight training and aerobics.  A third is finding some supplemental activities (mostly stretching related) to help increase my flexibility, which is rather abysmal.

Another - and this is a surprise - is looking at stopping some things.

Again, this falls into the category of the most minor of details:  a 10 minute daily activity here, a 10 minute activity there.  Now I am at the point where I am looking at each activity, asking "Does this actually advance my chosen lifestyle?"  If not, I am finding it is easier and easier to just stop doing that thing - for a week, I tell myself, just stop for a week and see how it goes.

My guess?  One week will turn into a month and carry on from there.

I am trying not to have high expectations of any of this - after all, I am famous for starting things that I never finish - but the fact that I can actually see the outcome of this thinking is rather somewhat exciting.

Sometimes - surprisingly - I may actually have good advice.

Even for myself.

Relevance And Obedience

One thing that I have written about here from time to time in the past is our current society's deep-seated need for relevance.

I have most often done this in the context of the Modern Church movement, which (in my opinion) has often pushed the historic Christian faith to the side in order to appeal (be relevant) to the current population (sometimes known as "seeker friendly").  But really it has become embedded in every aspect of our population, driven largely by a social media experience that rewards attention and novelty, sometimes to the detriment (even death) of those that participate in it.  Studies have come out where portions of the population of the young say they want to be a "social influencer" - someone who is relevant to the culture by creating content or even movements consumed and followed by others (often rather than creating something of value, be it a physical creation or any sort of actual existing work).

I would argue that it is a deplorable development.  Instead of encouraging others to critically think, we teach them that to be thought of as almost worshipped is the most important thing.  Instead of teaching others the importance of creating, making, and implementing things, we teach them that a high-level razor-thin depth of knowledge and practice of anything is more important as long as one can make it look good.  And we teach them that influence - on others, on the culture, on the world - is the only meaningful metric for success.

In my haste to critique the world of this, it has come to my attention that I suffer from the exact same need to be relevant.

The initiating action was both logical and silly:  over the last 1.5 months, there has been a steady reduction of "visits" to the blog.  Part of that, undoubtedly, was due to a spammer finally being blocked in a meaningful fashion.  But it continued to fall.  In my pride, I saw it as "significant".

The second factor that confirmed this was a comment on another blog.

On the whole, I have a pretty narrow ring of blogs that I visit and comment on - most of them are two the right there (all reliable and solid people over there) but there are also a few which, due to the sort of content we do not discuss here, I never link to but do visit.  In my haste one morning to perhaps be "relevant" and make what I perceived to be a deep and penetrating comment, I posted.  And was effectively cut down (by words, mind you) at the knees for the better part of the day.  If one could measure relevance by follow comments and discussion, I had "achieved" it.

But what it really did was make me question my own need for "relevance".

Oddly enough (as it turns out), "relevance" is not something that The Bible specifically speaks to.  Oh, it speaks to relevance in the sense of the relevance of God's word to our daily lives, but almost nothing about any command where we are told to "Be ye relevant".  There is, however, a great deal in there about "Be ye obedient".

Obedience is, obviously, not relevance.  If the two cross paths at some points - where our obedience makes us relevant - it is only by accident and almost, I suspect, never by choice or chance. We are called to be obedient as obedient children, as witnesses of the orderliness of the Christian live, to demonstrate our sanctification (holiness) through obedience.  It is even suggested that good things come from obedience.

Obedience is commanded, relevance never so.

It has certainly made me go back and re-examine my own life.

That re-examination has taken two paths.  The first is simply - for a lack of a better phrase - to "stay in my lane".  My ability to generate relevant posts, at least on other sites, is demonstrably minimal at best.  Better to simply let that go.

The other path is in my own writing.

Every since I started this blog (many years in the rear view mirror now), I secretly had in my heart that somehow this was going to be a "relevant" blog (of course, in those younger days "relevance" was also measured by the vain notion that people make money at this).  I let that part go, but secretly all these years it appears I have still cherished that desire in my heart. And when I feel like I am not hitting it, I try to go be "relevant" elsewhere - with predictable results.

It likely will not change how I write (although I have already asked God about why I am doing this anyway and is it what He still thinks is good).  It will, likely, change a little what I write about though - perhaps my personally worst blog posts are the ones where I try so hard to be relevant that the whole thing is forced: forced in reading, forced in understanding, and indeed forced in somehow pretending I did my best work.

What I reminded, as it turns out, was exactly what I have pointed out in others:  my call was and is never to be relevant.  It is to be obedient.  Because, as Scripture demonstrates, God works on and through the Obedient.  Almost never does He work through the Relevant - except usually as an object lesson.

Be One

 "Now your remaining years are few.  Live them, then, as though on a mountain-top.  Whether a man's lot be cast in this place or that matters nothing, provided that in all places he views the world as a city and himself its citizen.  Give men the chance to see and know a true man, living by Nature's law.  If they cannot brook the sight, let them do away with him.  Better so, than to live as they live.

Waste no more time on arguing what a good man should be.  Be one."

- Marcus Aurelius,  Meditations, Book 10,  Sections 15 and 16

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I cannot ultimately control the world or the things that occur to me from outside of me.  What I can control is how I live and how I act and the example that I present.  This, anyone can do for free and without training.  It merely takes the moment by moment decision to live (or Live in Truth, as Solzhenitsyn would say).

2024 Goal Setting (Or, An Exercise In The Unknown)

 Long time readers of my blog may recall that in years past, December is the month that is typically filled with me writing and re-writing (and re-re-writing) my goals.  In fact, I suspect it tended to eat up a lot of valuable electron space.

That exercise last year - as it turns out - was an exercise in futility.  Not completely my fault at all, of course - one could not have predicted Hammerfall 2.0 and Hammerfall 3.0 were not anticipated in the December prior and the impact of those in time and money turned out to be significant; it is hard to discuss things like increases in the load of weight lifts when you lose access to the gym or doing other activities when your life focuses to finding a job and then keeping said job. 

 At the same time, I am a great believer in having goals even if you do not hitting them:  as the saying goes, if you aim for the stars you will hit the moon (or a mountain, or an inconveniently placed electric pole - at any rate, you will hit something).  

Some years ago I adopted the Rule of Five for Goals (like I do for almost everything else, as five is simple and I can count it on my hand).  I even came up with a catchy Acronym, GGGII, which stands for "God, Girls, Gold, Iaijutsu, and Ichiryo Gusoku (well, perhaps not so catchy.  This is why I am not in marketing).

"God" is, I suspect, pretty self explanatory. "Girls" is really family, as (with the exception of myself, I-Bun, A The Cat, and M the Guinea Pig), this house is run by females.  "Gold" is simply career in its various manifestations.  "Iaijutsu" refers to my sword art, but encompasses things that support it like physical fitness and Japanese language.  "Ichiryo Gusoku" (Literally "One plot of land, one suit of armor") refers to the concept of providing for one's self to the best of my ability - philosophy is here and [theoretical] goals are here.

So I have a desire to have goals, and I have a structure to create them.  What I need now is the actual goals.  

Which is, of course, the most difficult.

Difficult not in the sense that it difficult to come up with them - I can always come up with something - but difficult in the sense that I need to have goals which are both reflective of my current situation (and, whatever happens next year, slowly rebuilding from the current situation) and are items that are mostly in my control to achieve.  This was one of my weaknesses for 2023:  the goals were based on things outside of my control.

For example, under "God" I simply have something like "Find a ministry to get involved in" and "Greater time in prayer" - yes, I will continue to look for longer term church home, but where we end up is not clear to me now.

Under "Girls", it looks a lot like a regular date night (something the last year has not been kind in) as well.  Finding ways for all of us to spend time together as we can is there passively as well, as we are reaching the point where paths are separating farther and farther.

Under "Gold", I have a single primary - Find a full time job - and some smaller goals around either industry certification (to make myself more valuable - after all, this industry is a skill) or generating other income.

Under "Iaijutsu", it is simply "Train harder in preparation for testing for certification".  I would also like to test for the N4 Japanese certificate through JLPT, although this does not really impact my life except personally.  Personal training has become a floating target as the equipment I have access to has changed - so Olympic Style lifts (and the weights involved) are not really possible).  That said, I will need to find some target - as well, I suspect, of more aerobic related goals (as those are effectively free except for the cost of a pair of shoes).

"Ichiryo Gusoku" is pretty vague at this point.  The reality is that - likely barring a miracle - The Ranch is going to be something that might delayed for five to ten years realistically (which means I have to put my nose to the grindstone and my pride under my feet and finish cleaning the house out).  Which means that New Home and its environs are the canvas I have to paint on, at least for the foreseeable future.  That limits some potential items  and, given the unknown length of my unemployment, means I need to focus on things that are low cost or essentially free - which in turn, means likely supplying finished dairy products (cheese and yogurt), expanding and managing the garden, and other small self sufficiency projects for which I already have the items/materials to perform (darning socks, anyone?).

The great news about all of this is they remain almost 100% within my control (with the exception of "Find a Job", of course).  The more humbling news for me is that in some ways, this represents the least aggressive set of goals I have had in many years.

But perhaps that is okay.  Given the state of the world - given the state of my world - perhaps a series of low, slow balls over home plate is just what needs to happen this year.  After all, there is nothing like success to breed success.

The Cosmic Computer, The End Of Progress, And Big Goals

Of the works that we have from H. (Henry) Beam Piper (1904-1964), the favorite parts of his works to me are those that are labeled "Space Opera", a sub-genre which (per Wikipedia) involves "space warfare, with melodramatic risk-taking space adventures, relationships, and chivalric romance" (e.g., the sort of fantasy world I live in on a daily basis - or would like to, anyway).  Piper's genius was taken historical situations from Earth history and replicating them in the future:  Uller Uprising (The 1857 Sepoy Mutiny), Space Viking (A combination of 9th Century Viking Raiding and the 1932 rise of Hitler),  Four Day Planet (Any one of several colonial revolutions) and A Planet For Texans (well, not really based on a particular historical event, but what would happen if Texas was a planet?).

However, one of my favorites - and one I came late to - is The Cosmic Computer.

(Not my copy, but the copy I have.  Note that $0.40 price circa 1963)

The Cosmic Computer (originally Junkyard Planet) is the story of one Conn Maxwell, sent by several of his father's friends from the planet of Poictesme to Earth to study.  The planet he is from - Poictesme - was the main base of the Terran Federation during a war 40 years earlier.  The war ended and the Federation retreated, leaving a planet filled with military hardware suddenly on the fringes of the Federation, whose main business has become brandy and "mining" the military hardware.  Also rumored on the planet was Merlin, a supercomputer that supposedly helped the Federation win the war but has acquired an almost mythical status.  Conn was sent to find evidence of Merlin; the story is about his return and the re-establishment of civilization as well as the continuing search for Merlin.

It is worth reading the book (so I will not spoil the ending), but in the course of looking for Merlin, Conn convinces the business leaders of the town he belongs to (in Piper's works, government is seldom if ever truly helpful) of an economic plan to restore prosperity to the planet by 1) Directly trading with Earth instead of using third party traders; 2) Finding a space ship and space port to enable this; and 3) Re-establishing the industry required to manufacture said space ship.

One leaves the book with hope but not certainty that the people of Poictesme will succeed, that they have a plan going forward, a far cry from when Conn arrived on a planet with a slowly degrading infrastructure and no plans but to continue to  do what they have always been doing and hope for some kind of magic from a computer they believe to exist.

----

One of the things I miss the most about the world today is a sense that we are working towards a better future.

I have related the story before, but a lot of my view of progress and technology was set in the mid 1970's when I was into reading books about space and space stations. I would look at the artists' renditions of what a space station or space craft would look like.  It looked...well, futuristic. It also looked like there was something more amazing that what we had today.

I compare that with the messaging I see today.

To be fair, there are still companies out there that are pushing the envelope towards a better future.  Most of the rocket companies are doing it (The Silicon Greybeard, if you do not already read him, has a great daily on such things).  And there are lots of more invisible companies doing this:  biopharma and medical device companies with tools and cures we could not dream of 50 years ago, computer and software companies that create amazing tools to do amazing things.

But that is not the perception I sense on a daily basis.

Instead, I see a world that no longer seeks a better future.  It seeks a future that is insular, controlled, managed - in some cases deindustrialized.    Rather than seek to expand it seeks to contract and pull everyone in with it, leaving nothing but a constrained frame of life that no longer seeks progress but only maintenance.

I know - it is odd to hear someone like myself, someone who values my Luddite tendencies and "low tech", to be speaking that there is no vision of progress.  But I see that the sense of progress in one area permeates society, even to those who desire to live a less industrialized future.  Seen the other way - limiting options and lowering aims - has the same effect:  it lowers the expectations of all areas of society.  Suddenly we are not seeking the edge of what we can do, we are only seeking  the upper edge of the bottom).

Ultimately what saved the planet of Poictesme was not just continuing to glide on the past as it continued to lose speed but rather to make an active attempt at advancing in a direction.  To me, at least, it feels that we are exactly the opposite:  having abandoned any active attempts, we are content to slowly lose any sense of progress at all until, like a collapsing star, we begin to fall in on ourselves.

---

I had written earlier this week that I found myself in a bit of the post-Thanksgiving doldrums, but it was not caused specifically by Thanksgiving.  It was caused by - as Resident Optimist Ed put it - "losing the spark".  I read that and realized "that, this is precisely the thing".  I feel not so much trapped as if in some giant holding pattern, circling the airport continuously waiting to land.  

I find myself between goals too, as odd that sounds for someone that spends a rather ridiculous amount of time planning them (and posting about it) every year.  Not goals in the sense of "what I should do next year", but big goals, the sort that fire the blood and the imagination and give purpose to everything that one puts one's hand to.  One may remember a certain business movement ten to fifteen years ago that promoted "BHAG" (Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals).  Something that would turn on its head the idea that we all did not come this far in our lives just to be mediocre.

What is that goal?  What is that next thing I need to be about accomplishing?  I do not know, writing from this side of it.  But the more I think about it, the more I believe that this has become the missing key to the spark flying away.  Find that thing - and it should be something so big that it will literally take me the rest of my life to grow into the person who can - and I believe these doldrums will come to an end.

Call it hope, call it vision, call it a plan - I (and maybe we) need something that we can aspire to, not something that we devolve into.

On Going Back To Work And Appreciating Time

 Assuming all is in order (and as of this writing, I have no reason not to assume so) there is every chance that this coming Wednesday, I will start my new "main" job (to Eaton Rapids Joe's kind point earlier, I do have a second job, but right now that could not pay the bulk of the proverbial bills).

The whole thing strikes me as a bit odd.

Technically (if you are a calendar counter) it will have been 98 days between when I was officially notified that my job was disappearing and when I go into an office to start a new one.  And of that time, I think it would be fair to say that 60 days of it (the WARN act period) was not precisely a high amount of effort or activity - I did what I needed to do and no more and consumed 3 weeks of vacation in an eight week period.

Suffice it to say, I have not really been "working hard in my field of choice" for almost a quarter.

I do not have any concerns about getting back on the proverbial bike - yes, Medical Device is different from Biopharmaceutical in regulations a bit (for those of you that like inside baseball), but not too terribly so, and I have done this sort of work before for 7 years so really it will just be realigning my focus.  Also, remembering what "going to the office" is like.

The other thing this event has made me do is re-examine my goals and my scheduling.

Simply put, I am adding in approximately 40 minutes a day in commuting.  While in my life of work that is by far not the worst commute I have had, I have not had a commute in three years.  I will try to fill the time accordingly - about 20 minutes each way is the length of a single podcast from A History of Byzantium that I am listening to, so I can fill the time usefully (in all fairness, I struggle to listen to anything for more than 15 or 20 minutes at a time. For some reason, the medium does not work for me).  But that subtracts from the overall time I have.

Another factor is my second job, which at this point I fully intend to keep.  My boss has been kind in adapting my schedule to what my availability is and if the next two weeks is any indication, it looks like I will close two nights and work a full shift to close on Saturdays (around 18 hours or so).  This would allow my Iaijutsu attendance on the two weeknights and Saturday morning classes and give a full free day on Sunday (which, to be fair, has church and the rabbit shelter on it).

Bottom line: my evenings excluding Sunday will be filled with one thing or another and the evening closes will be me transporting directly from one job to the other.  Which means my major, reliable time for my goals and tasks is mornings until 0800.

If you have followed this blog for any period of time, you no doubt have already suspected I have all of this scheduled.  I do.  Fortunately for "I like linearity" me, the times all more or less line up so that I can keep the same rising and going to bed schedule every day.  

All of this means, oddly enough, that I have new appreciation of time.

Time was a thing I had wilds amount of in the last three months.  Now - almost all at once - time has become exceedingly precious.  

This was a development I had not anticipated.

This is certainly not a bad thing - no, I should have had always had an appreciation of time in this manner. It just becomes easy to ignore, especially when one gets caught up in the day to day tasks of living and a schedule which does not significantly modify itself periodically.

It has focused my mind wonderfully.  So in a meaningful way, Wednesday's start may really be a methodology to a sort of life examination rebirth and refocusing.  

Pretty heady stuff for a job change.

Changing Others

Friend-Of-This-Blog Eaton Rapids Joe had a great post on an old truth: that we can never change other people, only ourselves (yes, it is the summary, but should still go read it).   It was a timely reminder for me because I have found myself frustrated, especially earlier in my life, with the concept of changing people.

One might say obsessed, actually.

I am not truly sure where this derives from.  It is not as if I am someone that seeks power over others to make them change, but neither have I been able to completely just "let people be".

I have become more aware of this issue and the levels of frustration that it causes lately in my life.  Circumstances have led me here:  the frustration of Hammerfall 2.0, the frustration of what appears to be a delayed relocation, the frustration of watching the world around me shamble its way towards its own self-fulfilling prophecies.

Part of it derives from simple human nature, I am sure: in some form or fashion, we all start out believing that we change people.  Originally it starts with simple things like emotion or logic; when it goes poorly it moves into anger and force.  But I do not wonder if another part of it is due to the oddity of the post-modern world.

Our technological post-modern world has given us the opportunity to "change" all kinds of things.  We have changed the speed of travel (from foot and horseback to cars and airplanes), changed the climate surrounding us (via central heating and air conditioning), changed information and knowledge (through the InterWeb and availability of almost the entire breadth of human knowledge to anyone with a computer or smart phone),  and changed our relationship with our health (via all kinds of advances in technology).  Add to this that, even as we speak, all kinds of commencements and graduations are occurring right now where young people are being told they can "change the world".

Change, it seems, is one of the new birthrights of the modern era.  And if all that can be changed, why not other people?

That is likely where the older and greyer simply shake their heads.

For change to work and be effective in the human mind and heart, the individual has to want to change. They have to "turn over a new leaf" or "be born again".  Something has to happen internally for there to be that update in operating systems (to turn a modern phrase) for this to occur.  And we, as individuals, have zero direct control over that sort of update in others

To ERJ's point in his fine post, we can find ways to continue to be effective in what we need to be about without endlessly waiting for others to change.  It requires ingenuity on our part sometimes, and sometimes even an almost emotionless management of the situation with the larger goal in mind.  Just as in any kind of organization individuals learn to manage down, manage around, and manage up, so we too have to do this in everything we do.

I do not know that I fully grasped this before.

We can literally pass our lives waiting for others to change.  Or we can simply get up and be about our business, nodding and being engaging while we move forward.    Like most things, the choice is up to the only people we can truly control:  Ourselves.

A Sort Of Hammerfalll and Looking Back

 Longer time readers of this blog may recall that in 2020 I went through what I called "A Sort of Hammerfall", the result of which was a change in my career path from my then-role in Quality Assurance to my current (and now perhaps, passing) role in Project Management.  The core of that change was the review from that year, in which it was noted I had "troubling flaws".

That was the single worst review I have ever received in my life for any job. And it has haunted me to this day.

A large part of the haunting - and frankly, my reluctance to reconsider Quality positions - is the fact that at some point I would have to explain the complete change in careers and why (likely) I would be seeking a lesser position.  Or more pithily put, why I essentially got dismissed from a senior management position.

This all suddenly has relevance as the initial screen I had this past week has turned into a hiring manager and panel interview next week. I have done my research and the individuals I will be speaking with appear to be educated and intelligent people (and thanks again for the continued prayers and well wishes.  If I could continue to ask for them, I would be ever so grateful.).  So I presume some form of the question will come up.

The reality is that I have never really dealt with that review.

If you recall, my response at the time was to simply agree with my then boss, as much due to my dislike of confrontation as well as the knowledge that arguing a fait accompli is 93% of the time a complete waste of effort in that the decision is usually already made and the chances of changing it are zero.  One thing that did ensure, however, is that I never had to actually respond to the observations.

Last Sunday during my visit to a different church, the point of the sermon was that as Christ did not look back after the resurrection, so we too are not to look back.  Admittedly the Resurrection of the Son of God and my review from three years ago are on slightly different planes of importance, but the point remains the same: as any number of memes with heroic pictures will tell you, do not look back as you are not headed that way.

Over two years after that review, I created a document with just the observations - my failings - written down. This was the first time I could bring myself to even look at the document, as it is not just looking at the document: it is recalling all the feelings surrounding it and going into the meeting assuming I was to be fired and then reading that, at least in the eyes of the reviewer, I had completely failed in my job.  But I kept it instead of just dumping it - for all of everything it represented and it how it made me feel, there are parts that are true that I needed to address.

This week I finally responded to the observations.

The observations were not long or particularly well thought out. In some cases they were literally "This was not true".  In others, they were "notifications were sent" or "resources were not made available as noted".  In some, they were "agreed, and this is how my current role has addressed that".

It was not great writing, and certainly not the quality of material I try to purvey here.  Even in this exercise, it is still hard to read those words.  But at least I got something down on paper.

And, almost instantly, felt better.

This exercise does not fix a lot of things.  It does not change the events or the last three years.  I will still have to answer questions, walking an honest line between what happened and my interpretation of what happened.  And if even I disagree with a lot of what was written, I need - for my own intellectual honesty if nothing else - to be able to check each and every one of those off the "flaws I need to correct" list.

But confronting something, even after all these years, is a great place to start moving forward.

On Attending A Different Church Service

 Yesterday, I attended a different church service.

I am a creature of habit, so the concept of doing anything out of the ordinary is both a stretch as well as slightly terrifying for me.  It is not that I mind the situation themselves so much - I have hurled objects not far distances in front of crowds and fallen out of an airplane and puffed my way up a mountain.  No, it is not the situation - it is the people.  Every time I do anything like this I am desperately concerned that I may actually have to engage someone in conversation.

For an introvert - a hard introvert, so far to the Introvert side of the scale I am almost falling off the capital "I" - this is almost, but not quite, akin to death.

Still, it was something that has been on my mind for some months now.  As I have been fairly open about here, the current church we are attending leaves me....bleh.  Not completely driven away, but not completely engaged as I should be.  So the need has certainly been there.

But church visiting?  The last time we changed churches was in the seven to ten year range.  It is has been a while.  And I am not the kind of person that cares to engage in "church shopping".  If I go somewhere else, it is because I have given some thought that it a church or denomination that I would likely pursue membership with.

And so, suddenly yesterday, the opportunity presented itself.

You cannot imagine the arguments I had with myself, first talking myself into and then out of attending.  "I will go....No, I should probably just stay home...No, get ready we are going".  I actually sat and timed the drive (it is less than 5 minutes from my house) such that the service was likely to begin just as I showed up (to avoid the need to speak to anyone).  I timed it just perfectly:  they were rolling out of the pre-service to the main service.  I slipped in to sit in the very last row.

The service itself was different - but beautiful.  It touched me in a way that I have not been touched in a service for years - I was not particularly surprised by this fact, but it did confirm that in fact what I was feeling about where we are now may be a real thing, not just my imagine.

The sermon confirmed it.

The sermon, in this case, was on the women going to the tomb to administer spices on the 3rd Day after Christ's crucifixion.  The point of the sermon - in short - was that the women went there thinking that it would be a continuation of the life as they had known it, except without Jesus.  They were wrong:  life changed for them (and the world) completely on that day.  From that day forward they were living in a new world, not looking back at an old one.  Christ was risen - but risen in a new body, not in the old one.  Everything, the pastor said, was looking forward.  There was no looking back to the ways things had been.

Looking forward instead of back.  Sort of sounded like something I have been dealing with lately.

So perhaps there were, in fact, two reasons I was reluctant to go.  The first was my usual introverted nature and my somewhat over-love of that which is known.  The other, it seems, had a slightly more theological  basis.  Someone knew that was a message I needed to hear, and overcame my inherent reluctance to get me there.

What Is The Plan?

"So, Toirdhealbheach Beucail, what is your plan?"

This question has come up (perhaps unsurprisingly) more than once.  And I am sure everyone means it in the best of ways - not "Get off your duff and plan" but "Do you know what is next?"

The simple answer, of course is no.  But simple answers do not make for actual decision.  

"What you need is a plan" - Sun Tzu, "Inspirational Quotes of The Spring- Autumn Period" (Probably)

There are two sides to it.

The first, of course, is my formerly current employer.  I am going through and declining all meetings that I do not have any responsibility in and am not 100% responsible for (except those meetings that function as overall updates; I remain curious up to the end how this whole thing will play out).  I am organizing my e-mail for convenient archiving purposes (to be fair, it is already largely organized - I am just putting the final touches on it).  And I am blocking out any and all time that is not directly related to any meetings I must be at (no, you do not get to add things to my agenda at this point).

The second, of course, is the more critical "And Then What?" discussion.

As it turns out, for all of the wonderful electronic planning tools out there (some I really do need to learn to use), I plan best in a simple spreadsheet table.  Rows and columns work for me and the fact I can have multiple sheets within a single notebook make it easy to toggle back and forth on the same overall project.

I have organized my notebook (and high level actions) into four areas:

1) Closeout Money - This relates to anything involving money between now and the end of my employment - in other words, no cash left on the table.  This includes things like filing our 2022 taxes (done), make sure all our receipts are submitted for our medical reimbursement (and indirectly, that anything else that we will need in terms of doctor/ dentist visits and reimbursements gets done before 29 May), 401(k) transfer out, budget review, and a revised cash run rate estimate.  Although these activities may cover the full time, they should not extend beyond 30 June 2023 (with the single hope that those tens of thousands of currently worthless stock options do something that might generate a little money -a vain hope, but I have until 27 August 2023 for that to happen: who knows?)

2) Job Search - Sadly, I am neither independently wealthy nor of a sufficient age to engage Social Security, so I will need some kind of other job.  This is the category for things like CV updates, social networking updates, and the mechanisms for a job search. There is no end date on this activity of course, until some kind of job is secured.  I would be wrong to say I am necessarily doing it with a high level of confidence, but I fear if I wait too long things will get difficult or even impossible - the market in my industry is shedding jobs at a terrific rate.  The other part of this is planning for some sort of short term part time job.  Anything to extend the cash runway.

3)  Find Money - Frankly, I have to assume that things will not go swimmingly and there will not be an immediate opening (even if there is: Plan for success and failure).  Which means that I need to see what else I have lying about that, frankly, can be converted into cash.  This is not digging into any of our savings or emergency sorts of things, but rather the things that might have some importance in a "employed" scenario, but none at all in "unemployed one".  As above, there is no end date on this activity:  Frankly, it is something I should just be doing.  

4)  Explore Writing - One of my long-time friends (long time as in "almost here from the start of the blog" friends) Rainbow, has suggested to me for years that I should be a technical writer for Biopharmaceuticals.  She believes - to be fair, perhaps more strongly than myself - that I really have the experience and background to provide a service.  She has suggested this for at least four years, and my response has always been "Well, I do not think I have the experience".  But then, she let me know her mentor was having a five day boot camp for the very reasonable price of $50.  

Why not, I thought?  I signed up - before I got laid off, as it turned out, and so ended last week not only without a job, but with a series of suggestions, slides, templates and the admonition "there really is a market for this (Website is here).

Do I think I can do it?   I have no idea.  Soliciting work is so far outside of my wheel house that the thought astounds me - and, frankly terrifies me.  I am not good with rejection.  I do not think I have the experience people "want".  On the other hand and at this point, what do I have to lose?

So I am starting out slowly.  I have the classes and slides and will finish those out first (sadly, I missed "Marketing Day" because we were preparing to get laid off).  I can find a way to build a website and generate an LOI from a template.  And go from there.  End date?  Who knows - until I either fail, succeed, or give up.  

So this is the plan for now, anyway.  I am modifying as I go - for example, if my last major job search was any indicator, after an initial bolus the ability to find positions that are feasible become fewer and farther between, and thus take up less time, which will mean I need to have some other things to do to fill the time.  

Which is fine, of course.  This is one great adventure, with the added bonus that the off ramp is coming up although I do not now know where it is.

Have I Gotten Better (II)?

Thanks to all for all of the good thoughts yesterday.  Yes, to be fair, it was a little bit of a reaction on my part.  At the same time, it also provoked a much needed mental reconsideration of where I am in my life, and where I would like to be.

Fortunately, in my moment of consideration, I had a book within reach (I know, what a shock):  

The Practicing Stoic by Ward Farnham a systemic introduction to Stoic philosophy - so far, outside of reading the Stoics themselves.  Lay out their philosophy and underlying thinking, chapter by chapter it addresses major Stoic areas of consideration - Valuation, Desire, Wealth, Pleasure - and then lists out what the Stoics thought on each.

I am not finished completely with the book yet, but one place that it did send me was in the consideration of being a better person, as was discussed a bit yesterday.

What does "better" mean?   A sliding scale of course, measured however you would like to.  For myself, at least, I need to focus on if I am a better person. 

How do I measure better in that case?  Am I:

- Less desirous of things or more?

- Less content or more content?

- Less dismayed by events around me or more?

- Less concerned about the future or more?

- Less willing to focus on the hard work of living quietly or more?

- Less concerned about God or more (Stoics tended to say a God existed, just not the Judeo-Christian one.  Epictetus was especially angry against Christians)?

Obviously in general, one wants to be both more and less:  More content, more willing to focus on quiet living, more concerned about God and also less desirous of things, less dismayed by events, less concerned about the future.   Add to this the usual set of mores as well:  More kind, more generous, more gracious, more honorable, more thoughtful, more learned. more caring.

I understand that in one sense this all becomes a very internalized measurement of my own making with (in some cases) ill defined metrics.  At the same time, this is the sort of thing that strikes me as precisely the most important thing right now.

To echo what was the inherent comment in some of the comments yesterday, we do not need people doing more, we need people being all of the "more" listed above.

I - we - likely cannot change the world this way.  But at least we can be the bright lights in it.

Have I Gotten Better?

 One of the things that rejoining LinkedOut has done for me is indirectly link me to a lot of former coworkers - every time one of your "connections" likes something from someone, it shows up in your feed.  I tend to just whip through such things in general, but one last week caught my eye.

The like was for a former employee of my company. I sort of remember the young gentleman (almost everyone is "young" anymore, or at least younger than I).  He left, as I recall, three or four years previously, seemingly just another in a long line of people that have worked there and gone to something different.  This happens I think as you grow older: you move around less in your career as the "younger folk" are establishing theirs.

His post was about his completion of his medical degree and announcing his residency. 

I just sort of sat there and looked at the post.  In the last period of time, what had I really done?

I supposed I could put all sorts of caveats around things:  my parents, the Plague, my job change.  

But really, what had I done?  Or more importantly, how had I changed and become better?

The answer, I fear is, "not much" or "nothing at all".  If I compare myself to three years ago I find myself to be largely the same. Same position, same place, same activities (mostly), same me.

For some reason, that really bothers me.

Yes, I understand that this is probably an extreme example, and that inherent comparison to others is not necessarily the best thing.  At the same time, I think it is fair to ask the question - be it daily, monthly, annually, or even just randomly: "Am I a different person than I was the last time I asked this question?  Am I a better person than the last time I asked this question?"

In theory at least, we should only stop improving ourselves somehow when we die.  The fact that I at least feel exactly the same as three years ago is, frankly, not a comfortable feeling.

A Cornucopia Of Books

 As usual, between gifts and books I purchased with gifts (including the Great Book Hunt), I started out the year with reading list already in hand.  

Mollison (Permaculture 2) and Brown (Dirt To Soil) come recommended to me from Friend of this blog Leigh Tate:

Nighean Gheal bought me these for Christmas.  She is interested in fashion and clothing, so I have received several books from her over the years on Japanese fashion.  The book of Japanese plays fills in a gap in my knowlege:

Osprey Publishing does some of the best work I am aware of in terms of military history and armor/arms; their books are great references.  The two budo books (Classical Budo, Classical Bujutsu) are by Donn Draper, considered an early pioneer in martial arts writing post World War II.  The last book, As I Crossed A Bridge of Dreams was unknown to me, but is a diary by a 11th Century woman in Heian Japan along the lines of Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book or in the time and style of Murasaki's The Tale Of Genji.  The fact that even though it is was both used and somewhat older it was still at full price suggest something rare and fun.

I was able to find the Loeb Classical Library's 3 volume set of Seneca's Moral Essays sold together for 2/3's of what the new books would have cost - all with their dust jackets, all covered in dust jacket covers, in perfect condition:

History:  Victor Davis Hanson (War of the Ancient Greeks) is always a treat no matter what he writes.  The Lives of the Stoics is in theory a high level review of stoicism, something I picked up an interest in last year.  Paul Rahe's book  Classical Sparta is the only one of the series of his four volume work "The Grand Strategy of Classical Sparta" that I have not been able to find used in either stores or on-line; I finally had to by it new.  And of course, what is a library with a history of the Ostrogoths?:

Traditions Of Christian Spirituality is a series starting in the 1990's which originally covered various traditions in the Catholic church (I have the books on the Cistercians and the Carmelites).  They are a wonderful introduction to the various sub-units and include both history and a sampling of the literature of that sub-group.  Apparently they had branched out into other Christian traditions; I bought one on Celtic Christianity (Journey On The Edges) and the Orthodox church (Standing In God's Holy Fire):

Thus, I entered the New Year with eighteen books to read which, along with the four I had purchased in December, started the year with twenty two - about a quarter of what I usually read in a year.

Bonus Round 1:  Perhaps to the surprise of no-one, I have a book allowance for myself.  This came in January.  I have been eyeing it for month (some readers may recall I have often quoted parts of Olivier's book The Roots of Christian Mysticism):

Bonus Round 2:  In November 2022, I also supported the Permies Kickstarter to support a video of permaculture based on the work of Masanobu Fukuoka (One Straw Revolution).  As a thank you for that support, I received the following electronic bundles:

- 3D Plans for a Pebble Style Rocket Mass Heater

- EZ Cob Rocket Stove

- A chapter from Edible Landscaping with a Permaculture Twist

-  Thermophilic Compost for Garden or Home

-  Wheaton's Video Series on Gaia's Garden

- Building a Better World

- Huglekultur: The Ultimate Raised Bed Gardening

- Together Resilient

- Learning to Spin with a Drop Spindle

- A Year In An Off Grid Kitchen

- Guide to Qualitative Assessment of Soil Microbiology with the Microscope

Bonus Round 3:  As part of my Christmas present to myself, I also bought the Permies 2022 Bundle:

- 5 Acres & A Dream The Sequel, chapter 6: "Food Self-Sufficiency: Feeding Ourselves"

- Hotbed Plans + Self Heating Winter Greenhouse

- Understanding Roots

 -From Home to Small Town Homestead

- 3 issues of Tiny House Magazine (Issue 115, Issue 118, Issue 119)

-The Hugelkultur chapter of Edible Landscaping with a Permaculture Twist from Michael Judd

- Clean With Cleaners You Can Eat

- Joel Salatin's Successional Success - Fields of Farmers

 -Planting for Bees video

 -High Performance Gardening

  -Companion Planting Guide

- The High Art and Subtle Science of Scrounging

- Cook with What You Have

- Neal Kinsey's Hands-On Agronomy Video Workshop from Acres USA
- A Guide to Buy it Once Cookware

- Together Resilient

- Harvesting Rainwater for your Homestead in 9 Days or Less

- The Weekend Homesteader: Winter

- 6 Ways to Keep Chickens

- 19 Skiddable Structures

- Permaculture Playing Cards

- Tour of Wheaton Labs, the Movie

- Paul Wheaton's Permaculture Thorns Presentation

- Round Wood Timber Framing: the Berm Shed Movie

- Care and Feeding of Rocket Mass Heaters

 - Hugelkultur microdoc

- Introduction to Welding in 47 Minutes movie

- Welding a Grate to go on Top of a Portable j-tube

- 21 podcast review of Sepp Holzer's Permaculture from Paul Wheaton

- Permaculture Thorns – A Book About Trying to Build Permaculture Community

I would love to say that I am not planning to buy anything else this year, but I likely would be lying...