Roles II

Okay. So today as Step Two of deciding on my roles (to prepare for goals, of course!), I have to prioritize what I do (again, this exercise based on the incredibly helpful Craft the Life You Want: Creating a Blueprint for Your Future at artofmanliness.com).

As a reminder, here are my roles listed yesterday:

- Husband
- Father
- Son
- Brother
- Friend
- Manager
- Employee
- Counselor
- Author
- Gardener
- Swordsman
- Renter
- Musician
- Dreamer
- Entrepreneurial Agriculturalist
- Disciple
- Scholar

That should be 17 (Hang on, let me count - yup, 17). Great. So all I have to do is prioritize them.

But how do I prioritize them? That's kind of the rub. Do I prioritize them as they way they are now or the way I would like them to be? Those are two very different lists. Here's what it would look like now:

1. Employee
2. Manager
3. Husband
4. Father
5. Counselor
6. Disciple
7. Author
8. Friend
9. Swordsman
10. Son
11. Brother
12. Renter
13. Gardener
14. Dreamer
15. Scholar
16. Musician
17. Entrepreneurial Agriculturalist

That's hardly the way I want my life to work - but if I'm honest, that's how it's stacked right now. You'll notice how prominent work related things are - that can't possibly be right (but it is really true)! And disciple (in my case, a disciple of Christ) is way, way down on the list. The things that give me joy (Dreamer, Scholar, Musician, Entrepreneurial Agriculturalist) are also at the bottom.

Perhaps this explains the great disconnect in my life.

Is there anything I could get rid of? Don't know. Maybe "Renter" - but that would just transfer to "Homeowner" at some point, unless I included it where I'm an "Entrepreneurial Agriculturalist". "Son" and "Brother" are, at this moment, a little less of a day to day thing because of our location in New Home - but critical none the less.

Okay, so there is nothing I feel I could remove from this list. So then what would I like the list to look like?

1. Disciple
2. Husband
3. Father
4. Author
5. Son
6. Brother
7. Friend
8. Entrepreneurial Agriculturalist
9. Counselor
10. Swordsman
11. Musician
12. Scholar
13. Dreamer
14. Gardener
15. Renter
16. Employee
17. Manager

That's quite a shift, isn't it: frankly, I don't really like..let's say value being a renter, employee or manager. Hmm, that's sort of interesting.

If you pull those last three, I suddenly see where others could be combined as well. "Counselor" could role into "Friend" (I do a lot of counseling at work right now), and "Gardener" could be rolled into "Entrepreneurial Agriculturalist". That would leave me with 12 roles instead of 17 - quite a doable thing.

Now for the next task: Defining a purpose for each role.

Roles

Okay. It's a New Year (Okay, technically, we're three months in). Time to pick up where we left off in December about New Year's Resolutions and getting moving on the path of living (yes, I know I'm late to the party. Cut me a bit of slack here. It's been a confused quarter).

The motivator? Twofold: 1) Lus a' Chrom Chinn and here suggestion of articles at http://www.artofmanliness.com/.
2) The realization that I am at the whim of events rather than controlling them.

The basis for today's study will be the article Craft the Life You Want: Creating a Blueprint for Your Future at the http://www.artofmanliness.com/ by Brett McKay (proprietor of the site). To start: decide on your roles.

Well, that was quite a thing. Make a list of each and every role that you fill, and then number them based on importance. A fairly simple task to start out with, but as I completed the list I realized that there was a lot more going on in my life that I thought.

My list (in no particular order):
- Husband
- Father
- Son - Brother
- Friend
- Manager
- Employee
- Counselor
- Author
- Gardener
- Swordsman
- Renter
- Musician
- Dreamer
- Entrepreneurial Agriculturalist
- Disciple
- Scholar

That's 17 for those of you without a program. 17 different roles? Ye saints and martyrs! No wonder I feel pulled in 52 (well, really 17) different directions. That's a heck of a lot of roles to fill in one individual.

Some of them are less difficult, of course (Renter: Pay rent on time, make sure yard looks good, take care of house). Some of them (Father of three girls) are so freakishly complex they make my head spin. Some of them (Swordsman) are possibly impractical (except for what I learn from them). And some of them (Entrepreneurial Agriculturalist) are remarkably in the future.

But if I look at that list, that's probably right. I'm a sum total of 17 different parts of my life. Great. Now that I've made the list, what do I do with it? Prioritize, of course. List which are more important and which are less so - and then I'll look to see if some can be combined/cut.

But that's for tomorrow. For today, what are the roles that you play?

Wants and Needs

Last night the Toirdhealbheach Beucail clan sat down around our traditional Sunday night homemade pizza for dinner and movie. The movie was The Princess and the Frog by Disney.

It's a good movie (one we'll probably end up owning someday) for the story and the animation and the music (dixieland/zydeco). It's also good for the messages woven into the movie: the importance of family, of dreams and hard work (and how without hard work there are no dreams), of bravery, of the simple love of food. But one line stuck with me over the night and into this morning: We may not get what we want, but we get what we need.

It's a subtle thought, something that is not what most people like to hear. We live in an age - especially those of us living in the First World - where it often feels like our birthright to have whatever we want, in the quantity and amount that we want it. But wants can be terrible things. They can become demanding masters, desiring to filled more and more, sending us to greater and greater lengths to fulfill them. They can simply be something that is good in a small amount but terrible in larger quantities. Or they can simply destroy us.

We don't like needs. We don't like the word "needs". It's so...needy. Sounds so much like poverty, like begging for something. So bland and pathetic. But a need is simply that. A need. Something critical which we must have - perhaps not as exciting or flashy as want, but far more necessary.

To be clear, I'm not specifically addressing material things. Those are easy to determine between wants and needs, and usually done in such a way that it becomes a finger pointing exercise in charity and greed. What I am thinking of are the intangibles: relationships with friends and family, emotional needs, feelings of self validation or self worth.

So the question I have to ask myself - with everything, not just material items - is "Is this a want or a need?" The two can become confused in my mind sometimes. I just have to think things through for clarity.

Which, I might add, really is a need.

Circular Forward?

Why do I write?

The question occurred to me this morning as I reviewed articles from the website Art of Manliness. This is a website about thoughtful men's issues and means of thinking new thoughts (some fascinating multi-part series, with very cool old pictures and graphics).

But reading it this morning has made me question why I write, here. Why? Because that website is the sort of thing I think I wanted to do when I originally started this.

To be fair, when I started I had no idea what I was doing. I just decided to start a blog. If you look at the postings year by year, you'll note that nothing really took off until almost 2 years after it was started. And even then, things have sort of migrated over a vast range of topics, sort of an electronic journal of my life's journey over the past 4 years (especially the last 3).

But is this what I really want? Is this what is the most useful and effective?

I wonder (in my heart of hearts) if I spend too much time essentially navel gazing in a guise of "deep philosophical considerations". Yes, I know I don't do it all the time, but I have been reliably informed by readers that they can easily tell what mood I'm in, or when I'm depressed (for the twentieth time).

But (argues the other side of my brain) what if this is the point of the blog? Surely not many do this sort of occasional introspection, and certainly there are enough other kinds of blogs that this may fill the bill for someone.

Which all may be true. But nagging at the back of my mind is this question: am I just writing in circles, or is this really a spiral motion that is leading me up the coiled spring even as I feel I'm revisiting the same areas multiple times?

Editorial Note

I just discovered yesterday morning that (apparently) I have a spam filter which will collect comments, legitimate and spam, into a folder. To those who have commented in the past and not seen their comments, my apologies for my Luddite behavior. I'll endeavor to do better.

Spinning Wheels

Lus a' Chrom Chinn made me think last night - hard.

She pointed out (rightly) that, at least by using my posts as measuring device, I have been spinning my wheels (figuratively, of course) in my life since we reconnected our friendship online. That's something like 3 years at this point.

However, the more revealing part is that if I go through my journals (which I have this year), I've been spinning my wheels since 1992.

This is somewhat alarming.

I have to be honest - most of what my wheel spin about are my choice of careers. Interestingly, I've pretty much had complaints about my current field since I entered in 1996. Yes, it is a well-paying career and yes, I have been able to do a lot for mo theaglach through it - but based on yesterday's thought I may have reached the outer limits of what I am capable of doing.

Why? Because my heart is always pulling me in another direction.

That's it, she wrote. What other direction is your heart pulling you in? What are the things that bring you the most joy? Why aren't you doing those?

Good questions all. Here's my first step in the healing process. A short list (perhaps Top Ten?) of things I like to do:

- Writing (like this blog, of course)
- Working in a garden (or even in the yard now).
- Reading (Mostly history, philosophy, agricultural/gardening works, theology with a sprinkling of fantasy).
- Music.
- Iaido.
- Working with bees (heck, just watching bees!).
- Making food myself (not preparation for meals but the actual preparing of the food: brewing, canning/pickling, grinding the wheat or cornmeal I've grown. I'm sure cheese making will fall in here once I start it).
- Working with animals (the rabbits now, but any smaller animals or livestock. I miss chickens!).
- Walking and pondering (don't get to do enough of this now!).
- Combining one or more of these activities (such as using the rabbit droppings and old hay to place on my garden, which assists the plants in producing food which we consume or save for later; using honey from our bees to make mead).

For those that know me, you'll notice that not one of the things I do in my career is included in the above list.

I don't know how to end this post other than to say if these are the things I love and not one of them is in my current career field, how do I get from here to there? I mean, without falling off a cliff like I did with The Firm?

Sucess and Loving What You Do

"If anything is worth doing, it's worth doing to excess." - Edwin Land, Inventor of the Polaroid Land Camera

Became aware today of the dividing line between success and failure last night.

As I was working out in what will become garden patch #3 last night, I found myself getting drawn into the smell of woodwork so much like that of a bee hive. I'm not sure what it was from - new wood on the neighbor's property or perhaps the stump which is slowly decomposing at the edge of this new plot. Tonight I ripped up up the soil with a pick, add steer manure, then worked it in with a shovel and raked it smooth. I'll water for two more night, then start planting this weekend.

After that I went to the garage and found my remaining garden wire to fence it in from Syrah the Mighty. Got out there, realized I didn't have enough, then started casting around for alternate methods in yard.

As I stood looking in the growing evening darkness and pre-summer heat, I suddenly realized how much I enjoyed doing this: working not just in the garden, but now expanded to the yard, making something beautiful out of chaos. It then struck me that I was thinking outside of the box to do this, looking for other options which would allow me to keep going when what I had at hand was not enough.

I compared this to the attitude I seem to have so often at work. It's not nearly as outward focused, driven to succeed, enjoying what I am doing and willing to work extra hard to make it happen. Too often, when things go less the right, my tendency is to almost gloat about them rather than look for ways to make things work, to glory in the fact that what I have been feeling and saying has come to pass.

It was at this point, in the wood smell and gathering darkness, that I realized why in order to succeed, one must love what they do to the point that work is play and play is work. It's that level of commitment that is necessary to gather that success.

I'm not saying that level of commitment guarantees success; a bad idea is still a bad idea not matter how long and hard it is worked. However, ideas are like gardens: only in soil that is cleared, worked, watered and weeded will they grow. That takes commitment, a lot of commitment. And the only place that commitment will come is if something is loved to the point that the work is willing to be done, the ideas constantly rolled around in one's mind, the actions taken to succeed when one is already tired from a day of doing the things one doesn't love.

So maybe all my thinking and pondering has been in the wrong direction. What do I love? Even if it's not something viable at this point, I need to start doing that too. If I can dedicate that level of commitment and action to it, maybe what I love and what I do will intersect on the road to the future.

Calling

I find the land and nature's creatures calling to me.

They called out to me this weekend as I moved leaves with my rake, through the singing birds and the blowing trees and the scudding clouds above my head, later followed by the shining sun.

They hold me enthralled every time I feed the rabbits, who give freely of their affection (on their own terms, of course!) all in exchange for some hay, food and carrots, water, and love. You have not fully experienced animal affection until you been kissed by a rabbit, felt the soft quick touch of their tongue (like and yet unlike that of a cat).

They sing to me in their absence; I miss the bees. I miss their buzzing, their industry, watching them work throughout their hive.

If I become excited about things in my life, it all comes to have to do with creatures and the land: planting a seasonal garden, taking joy in the mundane practice of cleaning after animals, looking at the brown-green of a yard in disrepair but raked and picturing what it could look like, picturing what could be done even with this small plot of New Home ("Quail? Yeah, I could probably make that work too!").

This gap becomes more visible to me year by year, sometimes even day by day as I confront the sterile office environment in which I work with abstract concepts versus the concrete world that is around me.

How does one bridge this gap?

Raking and Blowing

This weekend I tackled a task two years in the making: The Raking of The Backyard.

Two years of oak leaves, acorns, and some other kind of leaves I can't readily identify rendered the backyard a sea of dead leaves with green shoots of something occassionally peeking out. Accepting the fact that this year we may spend a lot more time around New Home than I anticipated, it was time to make the backyard a usable locale instead of a leaf ridden wasteland.

5 hours in on Saturday, I made something of a dent. It was me and a rake: rake the leaves and accompanying detrius (acorns, bark, branches, nameless bits of dog goo) into a pile, shovel the pile with the rake into a bag. Crimp the bag, shoulder lift it out to the side of the house. Rake another pile. Repeat until yard is clean.

This method will work, although there are two major problems:

1) It takes a long time.

2) Even with gloves, you develop blisters (and then calluses) at the base of your thumb and index finger.

All of a sudden, Neighbor B pops his head over the fence. "Hey neighbor!"

"Hey!" I replied, stopping to rest on the rake.

"I've got the leaf blower. Cleaned my yard right up. Want to borrow it?"

"Sure" I said, never having actually used a leaf blower before.

He showed the basics of doing it, then set me on my path. Armed with my upgraded technological rake, I returned to the backyard to slay leaf piles with new weapon.

The leaf blower worked fine. However, I noticed a few issues as I worked the second half of the yard:

1) It only worked well on truly clear surfaces. In grasses, leaves didn't really blow out.

2) It blew hard - and it blew everything. Even the dirt that I managed to scrape over with the rake and leave behind got moved, leaving a sterile ground with grass roots hanging on for dear life.

3) It was loud. Raking you can hear the sounds of neighboorhood living and birds all around you as you work. With a leaf blower, you hear...the leaf blower.

I finished the other half of the yard, then brought it back. "Are you sure you're done?" he pressed.

"I am" I said. "Thanks for letting me borrow it."

"You're sure?" he pressed.

"I'm good. Thanks."

I finished off in the rapidly darkening evening with my rake. Sure, I wasn't moving leaves quite as fast, but the evening birds sang beautifully and I got to see the night sky lit by the moon as I finished up.

Weekend total: 31 Thirty Gallon Bags (930 gallons) of leaves, acorns, and unmentionables with 1/3 of the yard to go.

Will it take me longer this way? Sure it will. But will I be in the experience of raking rather than rushing through it to get to something else? Absolutely.

Blisters heal. You cannot, however, hear the song of the cardinal above a motor's drone.

Friday Thinking

Quietly reflective inside this morning.

Am I following the right plan? For that matter, am I following any plan at all?

I am dogged by this sense that I have made a series of less than excellent decisions that have brought me to the point of my life that they are now. Not all of them were bad of course, but on the whole there seems to be no sense of unified direction or a whole to them.

The result? I am where I am now, with no real sense of where to go next or even where I am going.

Part of me says this is simply the nature of life, that life is a series of incidents we certainly cannot forsee and we react to. And on some level I continue to believe that - we exist in the midst of a universe of cause and effect, and we often do not cause the effects we have to deal with.

At the same time, I see those that achieve their goals around me all the time, those who have chosen their direction in life and have clung to it through thick and thin until they have achieved what they set out to do. Surely they have had such random effects occur in their lives as well, yet somehow they managed to move through those to achieve their goals or objectives.

Do I have goals and objectives? Sure. Does it look like they have the least chance of being met now given the current state of where I am? Not at all.

And that's where the confusion comes in. I guess I could meet them - if I abandoned everything I had and every responsibility in my life and pursued "me" only. Unfortunately the toll, in lives affected and financial chaos, would make any such "victory" a hollow and pointless one.

On the other hand, it often seems like if I hold up my commitments and my responsibilities, my life will simply continue to be what it has become. There is a sense, at least in myself, that I am so much less in so many ways that I used to be. Things I wanted to do or enjoyed are constantly getting swept off the map to meet commitments and responsibilities, until my life feels like it has become one long commute between two places. My fear is that I will wake up and find that at some point I cannot go back, that I am cast in place precisely where I am and that there is only the long slow road to oblivion.

And every time I plan, I lay something out on paper or in my mind, I am overwhelmed by events of the here and now, things that need to be dealt with - and that piece of paper gets filed somewhere, becoming part of an ever-growing fossil record of good intentions and dreams of the life that I didn't have.

The question is, what do I do about it? And what do I do about it that is meaningful?

Demotivated

I feel so demotivated this morning.

I don't know if it is being tired or a long day at work yesterday (or the one facing me today) or the realization that based on the talk of the revised banking rules the chances of my ever owning a house again are pretty non-extant (even though I'll work for the rest of my life), but I just have nothing.

I'll go through the motions of course: shower next, followed by trekking off to work for a day of productivity (this is how I now measure a day of work: was I productive?) followed by the commute home, dinner, Iaido and then bed. I'll talk, laugh, do work, try to concentrate, do my duty.

But underneath it all is this nagging lack of energy to do anything, to try. It's as if all the purpose and meaning had been pulled from my life, leaving me with...nothing. Well, nothing except a series of duties that I have to perform because that's my job and role in life.

Jobs and roles, accountability and responsibility. The stuff of duty - and, it seems, a way to speed through life without trying.

Mediocrity

"The signature of mediocrity is not an unwillingness to change. The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency." - Jim Collins

Mediocrity: The state or quality of being mediocre.

Mediocre: Of moderate or low quality, value, ability or performance; ordinary, so-so.

I am struggling with concept of mediocrity in my life -mostly in general I suppose, but brought to light specifically by the quote listed above.

I am in so many ways the epitomy of inconsistancy, zigging this way and zagging that, picking up things with a high degree of intensity only to veer to the other side as something else catches my eye. I'm certainly not unwilling to change, as the quote suggests; I am, unfortunately, chronically inconsistent.

Chronically inconsistent I can live with as a label - what it suggests, a mediocre life, not so much.

But I have to be willing to ask (and answer) the hard question: is my life of moderate or low quality, value, abilty or performance? Have I come to accept this as the norm?

Certainly large portions of my life would seem to celebrate it. In theory society and the workplace reward excellence and ability; in point of fact this often does not seem so, or in fact the very people that supposedly call forth this level of activity either don't lead by example or swallow the efforts for themselves. And it is certainly true that excellence and superiority go where they are welcomed, not where they are scoffed and ignored.

But as convenient as that is, it does not excuse me personally. All the reasons to do something wrong in the world does not make it right to do that wrong.

So then the question becomes a simple one: if I have let my life slip into mediocrity, how do I start to move it back towards excellence? How do I reverse the trend I feel and see in myself? How do I fight my way clear, rededicate myself to being an excellent me instead of a mediocre me? How, when I so often feel defeated by circumstances, do I find the will and stamina to push myself over the top?

Images

As I continue to watch, listen to, and digest the ongoing coverage of the Japanese earthquake/tsunami (does it have an official name yet?) I am struck by the seeming unreality of it all.

This is one of the difficulties of the modern world: we have become so visually dependent (and visually stimulated) that we can become unmoved to visuals of what we see occurring. It seems unreal: like a movie or video game we watch for entertainment.

A simple example: yesterday I watched a six minute video of the tsunami as it hit a town. The water continues to rush in, rising, then it starts to bring other things in: boxes, cars and trucks, a fishing boat, and finally the houses themselves are lifted off their foundations and carried away. An entire town, ruined. The lives of individuals, individuals like me, either destroyed or changed forever.

I hit stop on the video. I go outside to rake leaves in the yard. The sun is shining, it's 70 F, I open a cold beer before I start raking in the evening light with the birds singing. The whole thing seems unreal to me. I can sense the enormity of what I have seen but it doesn't seem to affect me the way I think it should.

I look around this morning as I type: my lights continue to run, the clock-ticking silence is unbroken by the sounds of sleeping family members, my coffee is hot in my hand. Meanwhile, survivors have entered Day 4 of freezing temperatures and uncertain food/water supplies - and in some cases, fears of radiation.

I don't know what to make of this entry fully, even as I don't know how to fully resolve this dichotomy in my spirit. Have we become so used to images being used to entertain that they no longer have the ability to evoke?

Raking Leaves

Back out to the leaves yesterday evening.

It's something I had been putting off pending -oh, I don't know, the end of the world - but still needing to be done. The initial large rake-off was done a month ago; however, leaves here in New Home continue to pour down from the oaks well into March. At some point it starts to damage a lawn, so it needed to be done. And, due to the fact of the time change, it was certainly light enough at 1830 to be out doing it.

As I started the routine of rake, rake, rake, get a bag and pour in, I looked up to see that Nighean Dhonn had come outside as well. Without saying anything to me, she had gone to get her plastic yellow shovel and started shoveling leaves into her bag.

We filled that bag and then another before I started to move down the lawn. She found another pile; unrequested, she went and got another paper lawn bag, figured out how to open it, and started shoveling leaves into that as well. She was raking with her shovel until I reminded her of the blue plastic rake; with that, she diligently sought to get the leaves corralled into a pile.

The two of us worked under the cloud-light evening sky, the air slightly warm with moisture: myself moving up and down the yard getting a long line of leaves, acorns and leaf mold into a line, her shoveling the leaves, re-raking the pile, then starting again.

When we surrendered to the oncoming darkness after an hour and a half, we had 6 thirty gallon bags full, including one that she had filled herself. The inside of my thumb/index finger areas of my hands tingling from the rake handles (even under gloves) promising the chance of blisters to come, we took one last look around, drank our water, and headed inside.

In the midst of such unsettled times - earthquakes, tsunamis, political unrest, economic uncertainty - it is often difficult to remind myself that there is much to life that remains pleasant and rewarding, even if I choose to not see it. Who am I to enjoy the privilege of spending time with my daughter doing something as mundane as raking leaves or playing Nintendo with her because that's what she wants to do?

One wonders if I chose to focus on these things in opposition to what I usually focus on, what my daily attitude would be like instead.

Pray for Japan

Today no post - instead, a request. Pray for Japan and her people, especially after the 8.9 Magnitude earthquake and 32 dead and destruction all up and down the 1300 mile coastline. Also remember the Pacific Islands, Hawai'i, and the North and South American Coast for potential Tsunamis.

32 (now 40) killed in major tsunami after 8.9 Japanese Quake

Tsunami Slams Northern Japan After Massive 8.9 Magnitude Earthquake Strikes Off Coast

Depression Again?

This would be - should be - the part of the morning where I sit down and write a smart, well thought entry about some aspect of life.

Unfortunately, there are no smart, well though out entries this morning.

There is only the dull roar of another day.

This is not how it was supposed to be. I was supposed to have a life that was fulfilling, exciting, perhaps even a touch adventurous at times. Now, the adventure in my life constitutes if I will wake up at 0345 or 0430.

Looking at it honestly, I think I might be depressed - which is odd, because it does not seem like the depression that I am typically used to. Usually depression is a black cloud, a series of dark feelings that I simply cannot get out from under, a long sense of dull sadness.

This, if it is depression, is different. It's not a black cloud, it's the sense that life is constantly running away from me. It's a general sense of always being tired and never seeming to get enough sleep - but tortured by the fact that every hour of sleep is one less hour I get to spend awake doing something not job related. It's the rolling over and looking at the clock every morning to realize that it's another day, seemingly like the last one - with your mind already filling with everything you have to accomplish.

It's the leeching away of any sense of joy or anticipation of life, leaving behind the structure of living with nothing to replace it.

Root Cause

"When a decision is made to cope with the symptoms of a problem, it is generally assumed that the corrective measures will solve the problem itself. They seldom do." - Masanobu Fukuoka, The One Straw Revolution

How good is the root cause analysis in our own lives?

Root cause analysis is simply the process of investigation a situation, be it a failure or not, to determine the fundamental reason why the problem or situation exists in the the first place. It is asking "Why?" until one gets to the true cause of the issue; it is the examination of inputs into a situation to determine all that are possible and which among them has the highest probability of being the originating (or major originating) cause.

It's more difficult that it sounds, because part of root cause analysis is continuing to ask questions to get to the true cause of a situation, not just the cause that you think is creating the situation. This can often be difficult and abrasive, because we often cherish our own illusions about what causes things instead of the actual cause of things.

But are we willing to practice the same root cause analysis on ourselves?

The reality is that the situation is no different. Each of us in our lives has failures, bad behaviors, even entire life situations which we would like to change but have no idea where to begin. Quick fixes often provide no solution, only a bridging of our guilt until the next round of occurance. For example, a simple situation would be to examine why do I feel depressed right now:

"Why do I feel depressed right now? Because I feel trapped in my life and situation."

"Why do I feel trapped in my life and situation? Because I feel there are no options or ability for significant change."

"Why do I feel there are no options or ability for significant change? Because to change means significant changes to the structure of my life."

"Why do I feel that change means significant changes to the structure of my life? Because any change would mean a change in income and lifestyle, which I don't know I am able to handle."

"So, a change which would mean an insiginficant change in income and lifestyle would be okay? Yes."

"Then what is that change?"

And so it goes. This is a pretty brief one and fairly generalized, but the Logic Tree approach works well. Notice that we've already seemingly ascertained that the reason for feeling trapped is I feel no options due to lifestyle and income. My choices then would be to change lifestyle, change to a similar income status, or perform the exercise again to see if I can narrow things down further.

The question in all of this is if I have the mental tenacity to do it. Am I willing to discover the true root cause, even if it implicates my most cherished beliefs, or will I hide behind lesser causes that may make me feel better but will change nothing?

Tuesday Blues

Struggling this morning with a subject to write about.

It stems from this horrible wave of sameness in my life - or, to quote my mind talking to myself this morning, "The sudden realization that the best years of your life are behind you."

The sameness of living permeates my life now. I awake predicatably at the same time at night, and wake up at the same time in the morning. My day, from the moment I get up to virtually the time I go to bed, has essentially become one long pre-programmed event of responsiblities and intereactions with occassional activities.

I keep trying to find little ways to spark up my life, to make small changes - but they seem to be inevitably overrun by the irresistable tide of entropy that constitutes most of my daily life.

I keep reminding myself that responsibility and accountability are good, mature traits to have, even as it feels that these very traits are the ones which are slowly plunging me beneath the surface of life by sheer weight.

Future? Dreams? Hopes? These things take less and less shape as the days go by, dissolved in the harsh light of a seeming reality that mandates that which must be done. Dreams and hopes almost become mockeries of themselves, vain imaginings reeking of the fantasies of youth.

"The sudden realization that the best years of your life are behind you." I'd say I state that with tongue in cheek, but I don't know that I really do. When life becomes measured in shorter and shorter increments of time, responsibilities, denials of desires and dreams, the long haul of "doing the right thing", the future seems to become not a bright sunrise of possibilities but the dull gray leaden sky of a clouded over sunset, promising rain.

Encourager

Driving across West New Home yesterday, I suddenly realized something. I am a encourager.

Encourage? I find great value and worth in helping others to reach their potential, of seeing in themselves what they are capable of (what I already see in them). It brings me joy - great joy - see someone whom I have encouraged succeed as I knew they would.

I don't precisely know what to do with this discovery at the moment - all I can tell you is that I get some of the greatest pleasure I know in interacting with others - mostly close friends (and who would have thought that I would enjoy speaking with people!) - helping them to succeed at their dreams and goals.

Even in my daily job, I find myself spending 20-30% of my job effectively counseling and encouraging my fellow employees, working to keep spirits up and give them a place to vent their frustrations and worries (I've argued for years now that this is at least part of my daily job function).

How do I go from here? Well, the one thing it suggests is that if I am fulfilled by it and if I am making an impact with it (hopefully I am), then I should find a way to do more of that and less of the stuff that I don't enjoy doing so much. Life Coach? (Silverline's thought on the matter) Not sure - marketing and building a network are not my greatest skills and I always have the concern of working for myself (even though ironically that is what I really want to do).

At the same time, if you find something you're good at, how long do wait before you do something about? Or in other words, if I can encourage others, why can't I encourage myself?

Semiar

Off to Iaido class this weekend. 

 The soke (head of our school) will be at the head school in the state where New Home is located. He comes maybe once a year, so this is a great opportunity to train with a man who, as our sensei said, has forgotten more iajutsu that he has ever learned. 

 It's also interesting (to me, at least) in that this is the first time since last year (absent traveling to Old Home) that I have been on some kind of vacation/retreat - at all, let alone with myself. How does this intersection occur, the activity that I have come to treasure above all others and a short break from the reality of my life? How is it that I can find the time (and energy and money) to make this happen when so often I can't make other things happen? 

 One reason I suppose is simply that there is a simple input/reward ratio: I have been to seminar before and know how much I enjoy it and how much I learn from it. It is easily worth the effort to attend. It's short term as well: it's only preparing for 2-3 months and then it is here. I can do the things I need to do to get ready for it. 

 But why can't I apply this sort of thinking to the other aspects of my life? Why do I feel like I have essentially hit a wall for anything else other than the status quo of my life? Why, essentially, do I feel powerless? 

 Interestingly, one of the things I like about Iaijutsu is the sense of myself, perhaps of power, that I get by doing it. Not by the fact I can suddenly attack with the sword; that's not the point. It's the sense of that I am learning and getting better at something, that the daily effort I put in results in an output that I can see, that by my stature and by my stand and by my sense of myself I can see that I am getting better, stronger. That makes me feel a bit more powerful about my life, if for no other reason than I am taking action to improve one element of my life which can impact others. 

 The question for me is how do I leverage that into the rest of my life?

Motivational Speeches: Some Pointers

In the spirit of helping bosses give motivational speeches in these times of economic trial, I thought I might give a few pointers.

1) When giving a motivational speech, do not start by making offhanded comments about problems you are having with the individual, their coworkers, or their department.

2) If you ask for justifications of situations, do not shut down the response with "That's not really the point" or "That's too much detail".

3) If you ask for input or responses, listen to them. Don't roll over them with your own opinion.

4) Motivating people by saying "If you don't do this, I'll report it to my head and they'll make you do it" is probably not a successful strategy.

5) You say "accountability". People hear "reason to blame me".

6) If you don't talk about rewards in conjunction with accountability and responsibility, don't be surprised if they don't listen.

7) "Motivation" and "Motivational speeches" are not fire escapes for your own issues or inabilities.

8) If there is not some kind of link between you and the audience, your ability to motivate will be slender. Be sure to take the time to build that link.

9) If people have learned to distrust you, don't expect them to sudden "light up" when you try to motivate them.

10) True motivation speaks to what the individual wants and needs as well as what the organization wants and needs. Don't confuse your or the organization's needs for the individual's.

And the bonus line item:

11) Before trying to motivate others, take an honest look about why they may be demotivated. The answer may surprise you.

Contentment

I'm struggling today Lord, with contentment.
Life is not really bad, it just feels really busy.
I keep finding things that are falling off my list
of things I want to do,
replaced by that which must be done.
I wake up each morning thinking not
"What can I do today to move forward?" but
"What bits of myself do I get to keep?"

You say that Godliness with contentment is great gain;
sometimes if feels very hard to be content in the midst
of a growing workload and homeload and shrinking time.
How is it that I try to meet all my obligations
and the only person that seems to lose out is me?

Maybe there's something I'm supposed to learn here,
some lesson of diligence or patience;
the thing that bugs me is that maybe there's not
and the thing I am supposed to be learning I'm completely missing,
buried in the trivia of every day.

If I am meeting my obligations and the expectations of others,
why don't I feel better?
Is contentment being happy with what you have
or merely the acceptance of what is?

Stuck

I'm feeling stuck.

Stuck in life. The sense that there is no real forward motion on any front in my life, nor that there is any retrograde motion as well. The sense that goals lead nowhere, hope is just another word for fantasy, and that trying anything outside of the narrow circumscribed limit that is my life simply doesn't matter.

I've no real idea where this has come from, although it seems to have surfaced about 2-3 weeks ago. I wish I could point to some signal event, something which would say "Hey, this is what started it" - but I can't.

What I do know is that every week, my life feels like it is getting pulled in tighter and tighter circles, like being sucked into a Maelstrom from which there is no escape. Time, once abundant, suddenly seems constrained beyond belief (see yesterday's post here). I suddenly seem to be at a dearth of projects - not that I don't have enough to do that I am interested in, but rather that new projects seem beyond my reach and old projects suddenly seem as if they lead nowhere.

There's a concept. Leading nowhere. That feels right enough as a description for my life right now, sort of stuck in traffic on the highway of life moving about 2 miles per hour in the far left lane, never able to move to the right and get to an off ramp.

I hate this feeling. I really do. It's as if I could close my eyes, go about my daily routine and suddenly wake up realizing it's 20 years later.

So here's the question: if I'm in a rut, and a rut is really a grave with both ends kicked out, how do I get out of it? Or (using a different metaphor) I'm mired in mud, how do I remove myself from the mire?

I wish I knew. All I do know is that this almost feels like a living death: inhabiting a body, moving around daily, yet scarcely living life.

Time Control

I've felt at the mercy of time this last week.

I'm not fond of the feeling.

The feeling of arriving at Sunday night and having your life managed for you by events outside of your control is not a good one. To leave on Friday evening and think "I put that much time in at work!" is not a gratifying one either. To realize how little you actually got to do truly important things can be a bit depressing.

Sometimes it seems that life, especially modern life, is conspiring at all times to suck the marrow out of every spare second that we have. There is something wrong with the concept of having to measure activity in terms of seconds spent doing something.

Am I arguing against planning your time? Not at all -in fact, that is one of the things I need to aspire to become a little bit better at. The reality is that we are all given precisely 24 hours a day. Every day. That's we have to invest, to use, to waste.

But what I am arguing for is some sense of us taking control of our time, rather than our time being taken control of by individuals and circumstances who view us as a line item in their calenders, a resource to be used by others rather than using our time as a resource for ourselves. Given free reign, individuals and circumstances will completely use every available moment of our time, thank us for our "contribution" and then move on, leaving us to wonder why we feel so tired and worked so hard and have so little to show for it.

Time: Are you controlling it, or is it controlling you?

Fear Takes a Holiday

Somewhere between getting out the door and arriving at work yesterday I lost my fear.

I spent the evening before last contemplating the outcomes of the following day: what could be said, what could I respond with, what would happen. As I began to spin these scenarios out in mind the worst of all possible fears came up: I'd be fired.

What would I do?

As I began to become agitated, I suddenly realized that I had been without a job before. Not by choice of course, but it happened (see January to May 2009 posts for a running history). And you know - we survived. Maybe not well, but we survived.

I had confronted the greatest fear - the worst thing that could happen to me. And suddenly, all other things were lesser fears - peoples' words, people's opinions, people's actions.

All of a sudden, as I got out of the car to go to work, there was no more fear. Calm resolve, a sense of what needed to be done, but no fear. I had confronted my worst fear - the fear of being fired - and had banished it.

My day was different -better, in fact. Not because any of the circumstances had changed - in fact, they got worse. However, I was able to view the entire day with a sense of resolve and a sense of humor (surprisingly) - because I knew already what the worst thing that could happen was, and realized I could deal with it as it occurred. If I could deal with that, I could deal with anything less than that.

I was free - finally, gloriously free.

Resolved

Facing a day of confrontations and choices.

I am trying to decide how I feel this morning as I prepare to set out. Anxious? Always. Anxious to do the right thing, for my family and my coworkers and my God.

Frightened? Not so much at this point. The worst case scenarios have presented themselves to me and surprisingly, they are not worse than what I have faced before. Difficult perhaps, but not worse.

Resolved? Yes. The time has simply come for confrontation and action. Not angry action, not precipitous action, but action. To continue to take mental body blows, to continue to watch my coworkers take the same - without responding, without assistance, without respect - is something which can no longer be countenanced.

There are times, it seems, when even the most timid must rally.

A Talk with Hope

The one person I wanted to speak with this morning was Hope.

I keep hoping that she will be there when I come down in the morning (although Depression always seems to be the first one up), but this never seems to be the case. I've left a number of messages but somehow (even in this age of instant communication) making contact seems virtually impossible.

However, today was the morning. As I rounded the stairs, I saw the light on in the family room. Finally. I would get to talk to her. I sorely needed to.

I came through the door frame. The coffee was made, the light was on - no Hope sitting on the couch. I sighed, got my coffee and then went over to sit down. There, on the couch, was a letter.
"To Toirdhealbheach Beucail" it said in Hope's penmanship.

Well, here was something anyway.

I opened the folded in lip of the envelope and pulled out the sheet of paper. It was the beautiful blue color I've seen her use to others, the ink color a rich dark black. I pulled up the upper and lower folds.

"Dear Toirdhealbheach Beucail:

First of all, I apologize for not communicating earlier. I'm sorry -things have been a bit busy lately and some thing always end up fallen through the cracks.

I know that you've been desperately in need of a conversation with me a while. That's my job you know - Hope, lifting spirits and fueling passions, enabling those to see beyond their own circumstances to a brighter tomorrow. I enjoy doing it a great deal, and often like to think that I've had some impact on your day to day life.

Unfortunately, I can't do that for you right now.

This letter is to inform you that I am taking a leave of absence for an undetermined period of time. I'm sorry I can't fully tell you why - please accept that this is a personal matter of the greatest importance.

I know this will come as a shock to you, especially due to the lack of communication over the last year or so. Understand that this is nothing that you've done, and certainly nothing that anyone else could control.

I fully intend to be back manning the Hope desk (my small pun -I know you'll like it) as soon as everything is put back in order. In the meantime, I've taken the opportunity to compile a small reading list of helpful quotes which I put by your bed if the need the arises. In my absence, Adventure has agreed to sit in for any critical meetings or projects. Please find attached a copy of my signatory authority designation empowering him to do so.

In closing, I apologize again. I know this is fairly inconvenient timing. Please accept my humblest apologies and know that even while I am working out these significant issues in my life, my thoughts are with you.

Your Optimist, Hope"

I sat there holding the letter, looking at it in disbelief. This would explain the lack of communication, anyway. I sighed and put it down next to me, picking my coffee back up.

Taking a sip, I considered my options. No Hope. I knew Adventure would listen and possibly give advice, but his solution always seems to be "Let's go do something - risky, if possible". Not the best of companions for a day to day life. The times I had listened to him on serious matters never seemed to go quite as well as they should have.

On the bright side I suppose, Hope did not say she was going to be gone indefinitely, just for a while. A while meant coming back at some point.

Still, there was the day to face. And the next one. And the next one.

Which I'd have to do. I'm the dad. I have done it before. I can do it again.

Just because there is no Hope doesn't mean there is no life.

Service Organization and Serving

Humiliating day yesterday.

What I'm coming to be reminded of - again and again -is that my function in my company is that of a service organization. Not a valued partner, not a valued contributor, but a service organization.

Service organizations (if you've not thought of one lately) exist to serve. Not specifically to contribute, not specifically to offer expertise, not to specifically to lead - but to serve. To provide a service - or a series of services - to help other people do their more important work.

Service organizations are not consulted, they are told - what to do, when to do, how to do. Once contracted, they are to provide the expected level of service no matter what the circumstances around their work, their ability to or to not actually support the service requested.

They are, to quote a phrase, "to be seen but not heard", quietly toiling about the minor details of life that are required to make a business go without any expectation of becoming other than that which they are.

I am finding this very hard to take.

I find this hard to take on two levels: 1) I simply can't stand being treated as a servant. The arrogance of "This is what I want precisely; you provide it" has never gone well with me; 2) I want to be the leader. I don't want to be led.

But then, in the back of my mind, God tickles with Matthew 20: 25-28:

"But Jesus called them to Himself and said 'You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave - just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.'"

There's the rub - I'm actual called to serve to become great, to be a slave (I'm guessing the word there is "doulos", literally a branded slave, the lowest of the low) to become first.

It never feels like it - when you see the e-mail that has a schedule that seems impossible and you stuff down the resentment at being ordered, when you see the pile of work only grow while others' shrinks, when you feel treated day after day as simply an interchangeable part instead of a valued contributor. But this is probably precisely when it is most important.

It has been said that if we will not humble ourselves, God will take care of the job for us. I'm finding He's a far more exacting taskmaster than I ever was on myself.

Sleep Deprived.

Another wretched night in bed. I'm not sure anymore why I can't sleep anymore - it used to be only Sunday nights, but now it is spreading itself out to every night of the week. I tossed and turned, evacuated the bed when Nighean Dhonn came in because of a scary dream and relocated, tried relaxing, even didn't try to wake up at my normal time.

Not good. I still feel completely exhausted.

On the one hand I suppose it's okay - I've learned to be semi-functional on a surprisingly low amount of sleep. I know it's not as functional as I should be, but I can certainly make it through the day.

I'm not sure if this is a relic of other stresses in my life, or sleeping much more lightly than I used to, or even something as simple as diet. All I know is that I am sitting here once again on less and less sleep, trying to make a run at making it through another week.

This may sound a bit self serving. It's not meant too. I'm just frustrated -frustrated beyond belief that my sleep continues to escape me (seemingly for good?), while the fact that life goes on approaches day after day and expects me, tired or not, to continue to function at something near 100% efficiency.

I dream (funny choice of words) of a day, or time when I can get full nights of restful sleep and awake to the morning fully conscious and alive, full of energy, my brain not fuzzy. Until that day here I'll be, trying to find the energy deep within to keep my eyes open and my brain functioning to make the best of this day.

Holy Sonnet XIV

I have never seen this before. It's wonderful.


Batter my heart, three-person’d God ; for you
As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.— John Donne

Kiriage

Last night at Iaido we practiced the triangle drill.

A triangle drill is where three (surprise!) individuals perform a series of attacks: one defends, then turns to their right or left and attacks the next person. The concept is that the muscle memory is being tested as you speed up the drill ( I call it panic. When an actual attack occurs, it's amazing how all your intellectual processes desert your mind). An added twist is that attacks are initially limited: kirioroshi (overhead cut) or tsuki (thrust) to warm up and build confidence, then speed is added. The most extreme (and most difficult) is a fast moving drill with any kind of attack possible.

We started with the standard cuts listed overhead: kirioroshi, then kirioroshi or tsuki. Faster and faster you go, bokkudo clicking of each other as you defend, cut, attack, get cut. Step in to attack, move out of way, turn to the attacker, try and think through what the attack is and how you will defend. Defend: block the blade, make the cut or thrust, turn to your right, attack again. It because a faster and faster dance of oak blades and black clad students weaving in and out, testing and probing their skills.

Then came the twist. "Do kiriage" sensei said.

Kiriage is a reverse upper cut, moving the blade up as you cut in a diagonal from the hip to the shoulder. We've not done a great deal of kiriage cuts, so the assumption (mine, probably) is that this is not something that is a typical or favored cut.

Then we all made a discovery: kiriage is one of the hardest cuts to defend against.

Because of the angle, we couldn't use many of the techniques we have typically trained with. They were either too slow or did not block the blade quickly enough. Stepping offline is an option (stepping offline is always an option) but the world doesn't consist of an endless flat plane that allows you to back up. You have to be able to counter and attack.

There are defenses of course - but they are totally different from what at least I typically practice. It was remarkable to see how much we had to slow down from our previous speed to try and try again to practice defense, blocking and either getting hit or completely missing the blade, stopping, and then trying again.

Driving home after class, I realized this was really no different from the life I lead from day to day. We tend to learn our own patterns of attacking and defending against the problems in our lives, and slowly we come to believe that this challenges are the only way in life that they come. Challenges which don't come often we may consider not as significant or important - not because they aren't, but because we don't typically deal with them. Then when they come, we are amazed that something so seemingly small or innocuous can destroy a hitherto strong defense.

The solution? Training -always training. Not just for the attacks that you are comfortable with or typically confront, but for all the permutations you can think of.

Because unlike the triangle drill, life does not conveniently confine its challenges in a linear or limited fashion.

Another Visit with Depression

Depression was waiting for me when I came down this morning.

We didn't speak: he from a sense of patience, I from a sense of defeat. I made the coffee in the second-filled silence and stood there, blatantly ignoring him, as I prepared today's lunch and watched the coffee drip down. Finally, when the black liqueur was fully distilled into the pot, I poured myself a cup, my hands wrapped around the edges as if I could draw the warmth of the coffee into my soul. With a long sigh, I turned around and came back to the couch to sit down. Depression was still there, patiently waiting, thumbing through a book.

"The Art of War" he said, putting it back behind him on the shelf. "An excellent and well respected tome of knowledge. Probably wasted on you."

Great. That was how it was going to be, then.

"I mean" he continued "let's look at it really. What you do hardly requires a grand mastery of strategy. It requires the ability to take orders and do repetitive, detail oriented work. Lots of it."

"But I have goals-"

"Goals? Ah yes, your precious goals and objectives. We're what - five week into the year? Six? How are those going?" At my hanging head, he continued "I thought as much. Sure, it's great every Sunday night when you've had rest and a weekend to recharge. But trust me - consistently, by Tuesday you're mine. More and more, it's just Monday."

"But the hard part is over for this week" I tried to rally a counterattack. "Catch up. And if I try hard enough and do what I've been asked to do, this might be the year-"

"The year for what? A promotion? You remember they're scrapping the position above you. Nowhere for you to go there. Or maybe even another job? In this economy? Ha!"

Depression was going now, his eyes ablaze, his hands poised as a Baptist minister preaching hell, his voice a thundering cataract. "You're a serf. A servant. You do what you're told with the what you are given and be thankful for it. Any chance - any chance - you had of being anything but is long past. You cannot achieve. You cannot be great. Those chances are behind you - thanks mostly to the wretched decisions which you made. You are merely what you are - a servant. Get used to it - it will make the remainder of your life easier to bear. If you have no expectations, failure hurts less." He sat back down in triumph on the couch, head poised as if he could hear the cheers of a crowd I could not see.

I sat there staring into my coffee cup, his words penetrating to the core of where I had said such things to myself. I considered the rest of the week, a panorama of demands by others in which I was generally expected to solve their problems but knowing in my heart that any such resolutions would be accepted as my duty at best and ignored at least. I thought of the fact that I was not sleeping and so not having the energy to do what I wanted to do early in the morning and late in the evening, only having enough energy to stagger through one more day to do the things I had to do.

Depression saw - instinctively -my thought patterns even if he could not see my thoughts. His confidence only grew, his smile only got more smug. He finally rose from the couch, a self-satisfied look on his face. "My work is done here" he stated. "See you in the turnip fields."

He turned on his heels and disappeared into the early morning darkness, leaving only me with my coffee to listen to the winds howl. Whether they were outside the house or in my soul, I could not directly tell.

Spent

God,
I have nothing this morning.
Nothing.
I'm feeling tired beyond tired,
The tired that when the clock flashes "Time to Rise"
I just lie there in bed.
The tired that when I come down stairs
I don't exercise or read or study
but crawl on the couch with the pillow over my head
hoping the day will go away.

I am spent:
Spent with work, of being two people instead of one;
spent at home, passing through like a ghost;
spent inside, a hollow core of goals and objectives.

I fool myself I think,
believing that if I schedule every minute and moment
I can be and do all things;
All I find is that the more I plan, the less I accomplish;
the more I do, the less I can do.

Help me (for I cannot apparently help myself),
such that if I cannot do all that I can or should do,
at least I can find the energy and mental spirit
to do what I able with a sense of purpose,
not with the quiet, failed sense of exhaustion.

February Moon

Translucent spring clouds
burn purple scudding across
February's moon

Powerful

Power and action drive out fear.

I was reminded of this yesterday when I had my meeting yesterday - the meeting I have every 3 months, the meeting it takes me a week to prepare for, the meeting that I stress over each and every time because of who I have to present to and what I have to discuss.

I was ready this time - ready as I have ever been. It cost me time - a lot, because I ended up working on two Saturdays to get ready. But it smoothly - the smoothest it had ever gone. The data was recognized, my proposals accepted, and everyone maintained a good attitude. To boot, I ended 15 minutes early - unheard of in my company!

As I left the room, floating on the heady atmosphere of a job well done, I suddenly realized that I felt in control. The fear had left - sometime during the presentation (I'll have to remember to ask Fear precisely when I see him next). It was replaced with a sense of power and action, an ability to move forward and accomplish things.

Mind you, I understand what got me to that point: it was the preparation (for this meeting, it takes me on average 40 hours to prepare) and practice (talking to myself in my office as I wrote) and knowing all the data in my presentation and all the data so I could support it (including random things that happened to come in useful). It was not easily gained - not by a long shot.

And the power to which I am referring is not some kind of power trip over others; it was the power over myself, control my fear (I can hardly say master - let's say we have an understanding), to do what I needed to do, and to have confidence in what I had done.

But I left that room feeling more powerful and in control than I have in a very long time. It was a good feeling - a feeling of not only feeling like I could take on the world, but having the skill set and knowledge to do so competently. It was the feeling - I can think of no other way to express it - that I had at The Firm when we closed a deal. It was not just that a contract had closed and we made money. It was visceral feeling of triumph, of accomplishment. Of power over circumstances that would have militated against success and a payment on the hard work that made it happen.

Such feelings are addictive. The more you feel this way, the more you want to feel this way - sort of endorphins for careers.

And it makes one wonder: if this happened in one meeting, what could I do if I applied this to every aspect of my life?

Focused Falling

This morning I headed out for another run which I am trying to do each and every morning. 

 As the path I take is often the same one I walk the dog with, I decided to take a different direction on the same route- reverse, to change things up. I headed out of the street and crossed over to the continuation of it. 

 The morning was warm and my mind was regaling my soul with the plans for the upcoming day and meetings that were to occur. Suddenly, I was reeling, my mind completely blank. Apparently I had misstepped. I was now off balance, not the normal thud thud mode of a runner with a steady gait but the thu-thud thu-thud of someone off balance looking for a place to fall. All I could see was the concrete and blacktop; all I could feel was the scraping sound my hand would make and the pain when I went down. And then I saw them: the medians. Swaths of dirt next to the street, between the driveways. Still staggering off balance, my feet striking the pattern of a man ready to collapse, I bent all my energies towards hitting one of those dirt patches with the dormant brown grass. I have not been more focused in recent history than I was in that moment as I tried to aim myself, a human missile desperately trying to avoid everything around me except one point. 

 And then I went down.  To the swath of brown earth and brown grass. 

 I sat there for a moment, not believing my fortune (or blessing) in having reached that point. I felt for pain; my hands were untorn except for dirt, my clothes unripped, my knee unscraped. I slowly got to my feet, pulling pine needles and leaves out of my underwear where the sweatpants had gone down and brushing off the dirt on my skin. Taking stock, I caught my breath and tried to head on (which, as it turns out, didn't work. No twisted ankles but my left hip was a bit stretched. An undignified limp home). 

 As I slowly worked my way around the corner occasionally pulling out a pine needle, I suddenly caught the irony of the situation: right before I fell, I was thinking about focus and strategy and intensity. Suddenly all of that was thrust aside for a moment when I really needed focus and strategy and intensity. Could it be that part of the reason we fail to achieve our dreams and goals so often is that we don't focus on them as we should? 

 Certainly we claim we do: we think, we write, we attend classes, we meet with others about what we will do, we even speak of the things we will do. But do we focus on them with the desperation of a man avoiding falling everywhere except one place. 

 Last year at the seminar, our soke told us one of the keys to Iaido is to always practice with a sense of desperation, a sense of reality. "Always act as if there was a real opponent there" he said. "Desperation will add to the intensity of the practice." I heard that, and believed it - but until this morning at 0435, I don't think I ever really understood it: the desperation and focus that removes all other things from your mind, leaving only one objective that you desperately need to accomplish, that you are straining towards even as your body careens out of control and you can taste the pain of failure as it looms up as each step pounds the ground, your center of balance far forward of where it should be.

 It can be a simple as a brown patch of earth to cushion your body. It can be as complex as completely changing a life. The focus and intensity remain the same.

Fluctuations

One week ago: snow;
Now, the sun says it's summer:
Brown grass not informed.

The Thick of Thin Things

I am overcome this morning with the sense that I have spent my week majoring in things that don't really matter. It the sense of waking up to another Friday morning, looking at what you still have to accomplish for the rest of the week, and realizing "I've spent my time on things that have little meaning".

"The Thick of Thin Things" as Stephen Covey refers to it, the things that crowd together in our lives which are about a mile wide in the amount of time and energy they consume but are about an inch deep in the significance that they have. This is a concept which I have long known and occasionally recognized, but nothing as compared to this week.

When I leave today, I will have seen two audits to completion and spent a majority of the remaining time either preparing for one or the other, preparing a senior management review, or fighting fires. The resulting feelings washing over me are not ones of accomplishment, but ones of indifference. In reality, the things that have been done and accomplished this week will have little if any impact on my life and will be forgotten by all who would benefit by them in a short amount of time.

This emptiness of career accomplishment is beginning to weigh on me heavily.

There is a sense - I cannot fully describe it - that the ground is shifting under my feet, that "good enough" and "taking one for the team" are no longer enough, that doing something for the sake of doing it is not enough create satisfaction. Something happened in the space of a week - something that I am not able to describe not out of unwillingness but out of not understanding what it is - that is sharpening me, tempering me.

All I know is that The Thick of Thin Things is no way to live a life. Life is too precious - and too short - to have it consumed in the morass of the trivial and short-term.

Overwhelmed

There are days in life when I am simply overwhelmed at all I have to do, and how little of it I want to do.

It all starts in bed in the morning, knowing I should look at the clock to see what time it is but not wanting to do so because I know it will mean I have to get up to start the day. Inside my mind is arguing "Got to go, got to get up, lots to do today."

So up I get, all the time with the slowly moving hands of the clock scissoring my activities. I keep checking as I go through my morning routine: am I early? Am I late? What can I spend time on? What do I need to do to get out the door on time?

Even driving in to work my mind is racing faster than the car: what is on the agenda today? What do I have to do? What can I put off until tomorrow? What is going to create issues in my day?

And into the day we plunge, trying to balance the work I have to do and the work I need to do but can't do because of the work I have to do. Everything becomes a trade off: if I do this, this other thing won't get done. Does that matter? How injurious is it?

And before you know it, it's time to go home, with 50% of what should have been done left in stacks on your desk. Your mind races again to what needs to get accomplished at home: what time will I have left after dinner and dishes? What on my list of things I want to do won't get done (again)?

The final insult is bed. I'm always in a quandary, eyeing the stack of books at my table I want to read versus my bed and the clock, which are already singing to me about the fact that I have to get up in a very short time and do I really want to lose sleeping time to read? I always try and compromise - a little reading, maybe ten minutes - which inevitably turns into 30 minutes. Now it's really time for bed.

But in the collapse into the darkness of sleep my mind is already racing ahead to tomorrow.

I keep trying to tell myself that I can find a balance between all these factors, that it is merely a matter of my inability to use my time wisely and schedule rather than an inherent failure. However, the reality too often is that I find my time being consumed by the things I want to do the least, leaving the things I want to do the most on the ash-heap of "On the weekends" or "When I can get around to it", which too often becomes "never".

What if my thinking is flawed: there simply is too much to do, and even most of that is not what I want to do? How do you keep coming back to center when your center feels annihilated by what needs to be done rather than the things that you want to do?

How do you do more of what you want and less of what you have to/should?

Stepping into the Light

There are moments when each of us has the choice to step into the light.

I used to think that this were only occasional moments - that if we missed them, they might not come again for months or years. However, what I have come to realize is that in fact they can be a weekly - or even daily occurrence.

There are two lights: there is the metaphysical light (the light of God, the knowledge of God, the grace and salvation of God) and the mental light within our minds.

(Well, technically there is a third light: physical light. That, I think, you've figured out for yourselves - or you've a lot of bruises from bumping into things.)

This mental light to which I'm referring (Metaphysical light is a long discussion for another day) could be classed as a number of things: self discovery, personal courage, even the simple act of greeting a stranger when you hate talking to anybody. To some extent, they will be different for each and every one of us. However, the concept is not: facing a challenge or a condition in which we have lived, will we choose to step out into the light and face it, or remain in the darkness and live in the shadows?

To step into the light can be painful. It can hurt the eyes; it does not give us a place to hide but instead makes us front and center of the challenge facing us. It exposes us as we are, not as we wish we would be.

But, as C.S. Lewis said, progress is only made into resisting material.

Because stepping into the light - daily facing the challenges we have rather than ignoring them - is the only way progress is made. There simply is no other. Certainly we can plan, set goals, read, ready ourselves in the privacy of our hidden personal closets. However, all of this activity is not a substitute for actual progress.

And the reality - at least for me - is that there are so many areas in which my life could improve (sometimes dramatically) that every day can be another opportunity to step into the light in some direction. Sometimes it can be big, like a dramatic decision to change careers; sometimes it can be simple, like being willing to confront someone over a simple error. But either way, they are both opportunities to make progress.

We should become so used to stepping into the light that every day as we head out that our mental sunglasses and sunblock should become part of our normal attire.

Stuck in Place?

"If you don't love what you do, you're doing no-one a favor by staying in your present position. Your attitude and morale will be negative, you'll be complaining about everything, and you'll be blaming everyone else and their dog for your unhappiness and inadequacy." - Jeffrey Gitomer

So here's a question: what happens if you are in a position where you don't love what you do?

There are a couple of caveats, of course:

1) Is it the position you don't like, or is it the company itself? (If it's not, could a new position at a different company resolve it?)

2) Is it the industry or business model you don't like? (Again, if this is not the case, a simple change of scenery may work wonders.)

So let's assume that it truly is not the industry, business model, company, and/or position you like (love in Gitomer's words) e.g. you really truly hate where you are, what you do, and what you could do in the industry somehwere else. Where do you go from there?

The reality is that most of us are not independently wealthy and cannot magically just "leave" because we really don't care for where we are (nor is this Gitomer's argument at the link). We convince ourselves that there are simply no other options: if we can't leave, we'll have to stay and suffer in dignity (but hardly silence), sort of like the old man on every block who always grumbles about the leaves in fall is out every morning raking them up, muttering to himself.

But in fact, Gitomer's argument is surprisingly different: "Most salespeople (substitute your industry here) fail to realize that when they become the best they can be, they will attract the right offers rather than seek them." In other words, it's only secondarily about the business or company or position: it's mostly about us and our attitude.

He defines a four part formula:

1) Determine what you love to do.
2) Dedicate yourself to getting the skills you need.
3) Believe in your company, what they do, and yourself.
4) Get - and keep - a great attitude. "If it's not internal it can never be external".

So perhaps (I write this mostly to myself) instead of sitting around and complaining ("rising to the level of mediocrity", as Gitomer says), we need to go through evaluation above.

Exactly how long will we keep ourselves in the personal and career chains of our own making?

In Control

I had the edges of a panic attack last night.

The summation of what the next two weeks is bringing hit me like a ton of bricks around 8:00 PM last night. Over the course of the next 10 working days, I have 6 days of audits, three senior management presentations, two system redesigns - plus the day to day work that needs to happen just to keep things moving, plus anything I need to do on the side.

It felt like a bit much.

And even in much of this I have little control: I cannot control what the auditors do. I cannot control what senior management does. I cannot make the outcome of the redesigns and the day to day activities anything other than what they will be.

I don't like not being in control.

So I have a choice, as I sit here in the refrigerator motor and minute keeping silence: how will I face the next two weeks?

In control.

All I can control is myself. All I can do is prepare to the best of my ability. The circumstances and outcome will be what they will be. I can influence, but I cannot control.

And if they are bad? If everything completely falls apart and I am blamed for everything (it is, after all, the worst case scenario)?

Then I know that I tried. And that my image of myself is caught up with how God sees me and how my loved ones (family and friends) see me, not that the outcomes are reflective of my value.

Yes, I will have to work. Yes, I will have to be on top of my game. But I cannot bear the weight of responsibility for all things that are beyond my control.

"In all forms of strategy" says Musashi, "it is necessary to maintain the combat stance in everyday life and to make your everyday stance your combat stance. You must research this well."

So I face the day head erect, shoulders straight, chest out, nostrils slightly flared. In control, at least, of myself.

Shinigurai.

Time and Energy

There are limits to what I can accomplish.

Oh, I'm pretty sure they are far beyond anything that I am currently trying, don't get me wrong. But there are limits.

The limits are 1) Time and 2) Energy.

1) Time. Time is limited in two senses:

a) Time in a day. There are only 24 hours in every day. Only 1440 minutes. Even if you make every minute very efficient, there is still only so much you can do.

b) Time in a life. Our lives are also limited. We don't know the precise limits for each individual, but we generally know the length. It's like leaving bread out on the counter: we don't know the precise time it will start to mold, but we know it's about a week.

2) Energy. Energy is limited in two ways:

a) Personal energy: We all only have so much energy in a day. There are things we can do to improve it - exercise, diet, active minds - but we still all only have a certain amount of it. Pushing ourselves to our limits with diet or sleep does not manufacture more, it only creates a deficit which we have to pay, leaving us without that energy for at least an equal amount of time.

b) Corporate energy: Corporate energy is limited by the fact that even in a large group of people, keeping focus and enthusiasm is a difficult thing. Generally speaking, we are all busy and have lives: to keep the energy level of a group of people high over a sustained period of time is a difficult tasks (this tends to be a hallmark of true leaders, who can call for levels of commitment and energy where lesser leaders have to cajole and threaten).

So based on these limits: personal time, life time, personal energy, corporate energy - how I am choosing to spend and live my life? For everything I want to focus on or should focus on, does it meet the requirements of being most important and critical, or do they fall into the category of filling time and burning energy to keep myself from being bored? Stephen Covey discusses the concept that the urgent should never get in the way of the important.

Do I know what' s important? Do I direct my limited time and energy there, or dissipate it on a host of lesser things?

New Home Snowfall

White dusting on brown:
The wind whipped trees from Tuesday
Sit at peace today.

The Future in Us

"We say that Nature rests, yet she is working like mad. She has only shut up shop and pulled the shutters down, but behind them she is unpacking new goods, and the shelves are becoming so full that they bend under the load. This is the real spring; what is not done now (in November) will not be done in April. The future is not in front of us, for it is here already in the shape of a seed; already it is within us; and what is not with us will not even be in the future. We don't see seeds because they are under the earth; we don't know the future because it is within us. Sometimes we seem to smell of decay, encumbered by the faded remains of the past; but if only we could see how many fat and white shoots are pushing forward in the old tilled soil, which is called the present day; how many seeds germinate in secret; how many old plants draw themselves together and concentrate into a living bud, which one day will burst into flowering life - if we could only see that secret swarming of the future within us, we should say that our melancholy and distrust is silly and absurd, and that the best thing of all is to be a living man - that is, one who grows." - Karel Capek, The Gardener's Year

"The future is not in front of us, for it is here already in the shape of a seed; already it is within us; and what is not with us will not even be in the future." I become more intrigued with Capek the more I read him; he has a very understated way of presenting big truths deceptively packaged as common items.

He's right, of course: the future is within us. Not the big, life altering future outside of us of course: that we cannot control in the sense that I cannot control the car that careens into me or the layoff that occurs beyond my control.

But the future does lie within each of us in terms of how we react and what we become.

As has been oft said, we cannot control events but only our responses to them. Our responses will determine our future - not just in terms of actions and courses (If I do this, I will end up here) but in terms of our own feelings and inner selves. If I choose to react negatively to everything, eventually I will become negative. If I choose to react positively to everything, eventually I will become positive. And these feelings and our inner selves will of themselves influence how we act and how others act towards us - again, our future.

Becoming is an equally important aspect - but it goes far beyond the negativity and positivity discussed above. Like a plant, I will eventually become what is in me and is in my environment (plants start out with seeds (genetic material); they get soil, water and sunlight and maybe a little manure. That's it). If I want to become, oh say a writer, I had better start writing now because 10 years from now if I am not writing at all, I will never be one. These things are seldom spontaneous.

Likewise anything that we want to be or do or become needs to have the initial beginnings - the seed - put in the ground of our souls long before we will see any activity. Like the seed, we will work and work and feel like we aren't really accomplishing anything - while all the time those seeds are below the surface, sending out roots of their own to wrap around our very souls. Even when the first shoots come out - when the first blog post goes up or the first conversation happens in another language or the draw and cut of Iaido comes almost smoothly -we will still feel that we are not really accomplishing anything but a waste of effort for little result. But when the future is in full bloom - the book published, the language mastered to the point of spontaneous poetry, the Iaido kata performed hayanuki-style in a series smoothly and without effort - the effort that was put in will suddenly either seem worth it or may subside in our memory altogether. Like the flower, others will enjoy the end result - and not think of how hard the flower had to work to get from a seed to the point of being an object of beauty.

Like gardeners, we need to consider that tomorrow's harvest will not occur without today's planting. Are we sowing the seeds of our future today and every day, or will we awake in spring to the bare ground of the garden we never took the time to cultivate?

An Active Will

"The life of a gardener is full of change and active will." - Karel Capek, The Gardener's Year

Will: 1) Desire, wish; 2) something desired; especially a choice or determination of one having authority; 3) the act, process, or experience of willing; 4) mental powers manifested as wishing, choosing, desiring, or intending; 5) the disposition to act according to principles or ends; 6) the power of control over one's own actions or emotions.

We all have wills. We have desires or wishes, choices, intentions - some that we voice, and some that live within us as seeds in the pre-spring soil. However, we do not all necessary have the disposition to act on these things, or the power of control over ourselves to make them happen.

In other words, we may all have wills, but they are not all active.

Could this be where we fail so often? That we discusses wills (e.g. dreams, objectives, thought, wishes) in the terms of "Do you have them?" rather than extended that concept to "Do you have the disposition and power to act on those things?" If so, we are doing a great dis-service to those with whom we interact and speak; we pretend that having is enough to actuate something instead of having plus doing.

Capek in The Gardener's Year spends a great deal of time poking gentle fun at gardener's because they are always in motion, always exercising their active wills. They don't (or can't) leave things to nature: they have to constantly work, rearrange, plant and replant, move, adjust, and nurture the garden in their care. They see the garden of their dreams in their minds; the gardener who is a true gardener is constantly working to make it happen.

Nor is an active will based on sight. As Capek points out (and any gardener will tell you), good gardening requires a vision that transcends the current appearance. They perceive what will be, not see what is - as Musashi said, "The gaze should be large and broad. This is the twofold gaze of perception and sight. Perception is strong, sight is weak." If we only based our wills on what we currently see (or Heaven forfend, feel) very little would ever get done. Part of any active will is a commitment to what can be, that thing in our mind - not what exists around us at the current time.

Is my will active? Do I not just have those things that I want or need to do, but the action and power behind them? Do I have the power of perception, the power to see things in my mind as I want them to be - and do I have the power to cling to that in the midst of circumstances which are not so?

Suburito

My suburito (training bokken) arrived last week.

It weighs approximately 3 lbs and stands approximately 45" high. My practice bokken is approximately half that weight and two-thirds of the length.

The purpose of suburito is strictly practice: no contact or actual engagement is ever expected (although a very famous duel between Miyamoto Musashi and Sasaki Kojiro was fought using one). Its primary purpose is strengthen both the muscles of the swordsman as well as to perfect the angle of the cut and the ability to stop the blade where the swordsman desires, not pulled down by gravity.

In using it over the last week, I've discovered two things:

1) It's heavy, especially used repeatedly for suburi (sword swinging) drills;
2 See #1 above.

However, in the brief time I've used it I've also begun to discover things about my own technique. I've discovered, for example, that cuts from my left to my right tend to get weaker over time, especially compared to cuts from my right to my left. It has revealed that how I move the sword back into position takes more time that it should - valuable time that could be used in preparing to or striking at an opponent.

The most revealing thing, however, has been how much lighter it makes the regular bokudo feel. It flies into my hand and around my cuts. I've not yet used my shinken to see if the effect is the same, but I'm sure just on mass alone it will probably be true.

In life, as in Iaido, sometimes we seem to have to bear and practice with circumstances and items far heavier than what we think we should have to use. However, when we train this way, it is amazing the speed with which we can move and what we can bear under normal circumstances.

Excellence and the Plans of Others

"The failure to commit to excellence, to victory, leads by default to the subconscious acceptance of mediocrity and eventual defeat." - Brian Tracy, Victory

Reviews are always one of the least appealing parts of any work year. Couched in the context of improvement, it is always a roll of the dice as to what you will get: serious feedback, vendettas from outside sources, or just a list of personal peeves.

Another interesting thing about reviews (besides what is in them) is how they contrast with the 364.9 days of the year. If someone says they want you to exercise initiative but always undercut your initiatives, the chances you'll take the review seriously and act accordingly are fairly slim. Contrariwise, if someone recognizes and applauds (without temporizing) your activities, your incentive to achieve is more.

However, I had something happen new this year that I had not in previous years: someone else's vision of me.

It happened quite accidentally: my proposal of what I wanted to accomplish in the coming year, and then the comparison for what the reviewer wanted accomplished in the coming year. As the discussion continued, suddenly it was not what I wanted, but what the reviewer wanted from me and how I fit into their plans that became the issue.

As this panoramic view of my position was laid out in front of my eyes, what I saw was not the possibilities that were intended (although possibilities were there) but the commitment of myself to the plans and goals of another. I was not a game piece in my own right but rather a cog in the machine of someone else. My success was not to be defined by my achievements, but by mine in their plans.

My initial reaction: defeat. I came home mentally exhausted and battered by the dichotomy of having one thing said and experiencing another, of having a glorious vision of my role in someone else's life told to me. There is nothing less encouraging, more demotivating, than the hear of expectations without authority, achievements without resources, proposed leadership in the face of overpowering resistance.

This thought followed me throughout the night and into the morning until, in a fit of early morning activity, I picked up Victory and read the above quote.

Does a quote magically change my world? Not the last time I checked. Does the quote apply to my situation as it is? Not necessarily - but neither can the commitment to excellence and victory be confined simply to the situation in which one finds one's self. But there is no reason to say the two cannot walk hand in hand, the current and the future. The opportunity to rise above current circumstances comes to all, but not all accomplish it. And certainly the commitment to excellence and victory is a self definition, not limited or bounded by the definition of others in their plans - in fact, perhaps opposite to them.

So the question hangs as I prepare for the first day of the next 11 months: Excellence and victory, or mediocrity and defeat? One leads to my dreams, the other leads me to toiling in the dream fields of others.