Friday Morning

I sit looking out the window this morning on a cold Friday. The earlier glories of the sunrise I could see between the rooftops and the tree lines - a deep, almost scarlet red - has been displaced by the more orange-gold glow of the sun. If I angle my head just so, I can see one shaft of twinkling light hit my eye.

The sun has shed its reflective light on the clouds that are overhead. They are wispy white things, small in number with one lower gray twisted cloud that lays across half the sky like a snake. Unlike many of the clouds I've seen in my time here, these clouds do not seem to be in a particular hurry to go anywhere and are contented in hanging in the early morning light, as if to soak up as much heat as they can before they move on their way.

The yard below me is still in the dusky greens and browns of the pre-morning. The oaks have shed most of their leaves and are standing as bare sentinels in the yard over the profuse growth of greenery which magically appeared in the yard after our summer of drought when the rains came. Other than clover and the occasional grass blade, I could not give a name to the profusion of low lying plants in the yard. Both trees and grass seem to be yearning for the sunlight as well as if to prepare themselves for the colder night to come this evening.

Simple things: Light, trees, sky, clouds, plants. But they are here every day, ready for my eye to take note of the beauty that is literally in my own back yard.

The light is brightening now and the colors become more distinct. It is time for me to slip away from this window and backyard to continue its quiet, patient job of simply being.

Night Watch

Winter's midnight watch,

trees dance in leaf-whipped fervor:

cold front blowing in.

The Drain

I constantly am surprised (I don't really know why) how much work crowds the rest of my life out.

I make my goals at the beginning of the year, carefully crafting each for a particular aspect of my life. I make my daily task list, so that I can insure that things that are important to me get done on a daily basis. I try to include in my reading something which will inspire me towards greater efforts.

And then work happens.

It surprises me how much work can drain out of your life. By the time I get home, more often than not, I am beaten. The energy which one had hoped to pour into every other aspect of one's life has been routed into work, leaving the pickings for one's spirit to try and motivate.

No matter how hard I try, no matter how much I aspire to do otherwise, this is the way it always seems to be.

Is the problem with my work - that I simply expect too much out of the thing that supports myself and An Teaglach? Or is it that I expect too little out of myself - or too much? Am I fool to set so many aspirations and goals, only to see them constantly crash against the rocks of my employ?

I am confused - how do I correct this imbalance within my life?

The Blinding Flash

There comes a tipping point multiple point in our lives.

It's that tipping point when we realize something about ourselves, or remember it. It occurs when we suddenly find or discover something about ourselves - something that comes in the flash of an instant and then just sits there in the light of self discovery.

We have to rediscover it because most of use (okay, let's just say me) consistently have to be awakened from the slumber that we mentally and spiritually put ourselves into. We say we want one thing, but after a while we convince ourselves that we are really content with less than was what we wanted. We can continue like this for a while - sometimes years - but something will happen and that original desire floats to the surface. It's at that moment - the moment of self realization - that we are suddenly confronted by the gap between what we want and what we have settled for.

What do we do with that gap?

Typically one of two things, never correct. The first is that we tend to bury those feelings beneath the casing of duty - which just moves them down the road, where they erupt with greater intensity. The second is that we suddenly "freak out" and immediately follow our desires without thinking. This, too, seldom ends well.

Am I saying do nothing? Not at all - because (as I've learned to my pain) doing nothing makes nothing go away, it just compounds the issue for later. Nor am I saying immediately act on every desire and feeling. That's the act of an adolescent, and most of us seldom have the time or resources to remake a life the way a 17 year old does.

What I am saying is to act - but act with wisdom. It's not denying that those desires do not exist - indeed, unless addressed they will continue to come to the surface and create anxiety and anger in our lives, which is not wise. It's admitting that they exist and then saying "How can I incorporate these in my life in such a way that the disruption is minimized?"

It's the least easy of the three courses of action. But it stands as the only course of action that will produce the results of the desire that we cherish so greatly - and having integrated that one moment of self discovery, we can move on to find others hidden still more deeply.

The Crow and the Cormorant

Once upon a time there was a crow.

The crow was along river one day getting a drink when he noticed a black cormorant floating in the stream. The cormorant would effortlessly glide along, then suddenly dive down and come up with a tasty morsel of some kind, which it extended its beak and long neck to swallow. It would then continue on its effortless glide through the water, until it climbed out of the water to stand on a rock and hold its dark wings out to the side to dry them.

"How beautiful" said the crow. "It's so different from my life. I have to constantly fly around seeking insects and rice grains from the fields, constantly in threat from farmers and cats and bigger birds."

He looked down at himself. "I'm a black bird too!" he suddenly realized. "There's not a reason in the world why I, too, cannot become a cormorant."

So decided, he hopped off his rock perch and jumped into the river, expecting to settle along the top just like the cormorant. Instead, to his surprise, he sank like a rock. He struggled to keep his beak above the water, and barely managed to keep it up as the current of the river washed him ashore none too kindly. He sputtered and shook himself as he crawled back onto the rocks, wet and bedraggled and surely lacking the fish he had seen the cormorant catch and eat with ease. Suddenly he realized that his wet feathers would prevent him from flying if danger approached - and he certainly couldn't swim. He slunk to the edge of the river, hoping the warm sun would quickly dry his feathers.

Crows, he realized, were made to fly high and be clever and dodge farmers and cats and other birds and collect rice and insects - which suddenly sounded like a feast to him. They were never meant to swim.

U no mane suru karasu (The crow imitating the cormorant) - Japanese Proverb

"A crow imitating a cormorant cannot swim, and so will nearly drown. In the same way, every man should be true to his own craft or, in swordsmanship, his own talents and training. Musashi would have us be the cormorant if we are the cormorant, and the crow if we are the crow." - William Scott Wilson, The Lone Samurai: The Life of Miyamoto Musashi

Morning Surprise

Coffee cup in hand:

Pumpkin wafts up from my cup:

Autumn in Winter.

Trapped!

Why does business waste so much time in meetings instead of accomplishing?

I have been trapped in more meetings than I care to admit in which the point of the meeting was accomplished (or could have been accomplished) in 10 minutes - but the meeting had to run another 50 because a) the sense is a short meeting is not a successful meetings; and b) meetings are more about individuals being heard and showing themselves as important as it is about actually solving issues.

The reality is that too many work environments, work is seen as something which is as much about catering to the egos of individuals as it is the accomplishing of actually work - and the vehicle for this is the meeting, where individuals get to demonstrate their worth in front of higher ranked individuals by talking about how much they know or "demonstrating" their decision making abilities. The result? More meetings where less and less gets done, where people begin to find reasons not to go because it represents valuable time which is being poured down the drain for the purpose of making people feel important.

Meetings have a place - as long as they have a purpose. And the purpose is not and should never be "To make someone feel important" or "To show we're doing something". Work is for work, not the building up of or catering to egos. And if something needs to be done - do it. Don't have a meeting where no-one is accomplishing anything on the task because we have to talk about the task.

I would love to see meetings start out with following mantras:

1) What decisions are we here to make? Here's the list.

2) We are here to make those decisions. We are not here to make anyone feel important or better about themselves.

3) When we have made these decisions and assigned action items, we will leave.

Will this stop pointless meetings? I'm afraid not - too many people are wedded to the meeting as a way to self-validate their importance and self justify their position. But there is a chance that at least one other person will see what you're trying to do - and be grateful.

Perhaps they'll celebrate by having one less meeting.

The Tyranny of the Assigners

I am coming to greatly resent those who Assign.

I don't mind those who are Assigners yet work. They are fellow workers in the trenches, not only setting the policies of the future but willing to work alongside to execute them. They make the decisions -but then crawl down to the ground to make them happen.

No, what I am speaking of this morning are the Assigners who do nothing but assign. Those who create work without any thought as to how it will be executed. Those who create empires only to assign the work to others, while they "oversee" the work, while they "project manage" tasks that they have no idea how to complete themselves.

You can recognize them by their habits: building teams only to assign work, or just being by themselves, always finding ways to assign the critical tasks to others. Not informed of the projects they manage, they constantly seek updates and offer their assistance to "do what it takes" to get the task done - yet too often when assistance or resources are sought, they suddenly find themselves unable to negotiate to get such things.

But they have no problem negotiated the tasks down - indeed, they can often become benign (or not so benign) despots, constantly seeking updates and putting pressure about why things are not accomplished more quickly while scarcely paying attention to the other ongoing tasks which need to be accomplished.

If there is success, too often they take credit; if there is failure, too often they redirect the blame.

In my more idle moments I wonder to what extent resources and time are wasted (yes, I use the term advisedly) on people who make tasks and "assign" things yet don't really do any work - and why so many organizations don't see such things more clearly.

Sleep: An Act of Faith

Sleep is an act of faith.

Oh sure, I know it's a physical necessity and if we don't have it, our functionality drops off dramatically (The Romans supposedly killed the last king of Macedon, Perseus, by denying him sleep for a year). And there have been long scientific discussions about what the real purpose of sleep is, and do we need it, and could we do without (some can: one teacher I had could function well on 3 hours a night).

But sleep is an act of faith as well.

To sleep means that we are letting things out of our grasp. When we sleep, we can actually do nothing at all - except dream, and rebuild our cells. All our plans, our goals, our worries which we work on find our effort on them completely denied as we lapse into unconsciousness.

Some of us (me, for example) fight back by denying ourselves of sleep. We figure out ways to cram more into our days - mostly at the cost of sleep. 8 hours goes to 7, then 6, then we are trying to see how long we can go at 5. The fact that we stumble through the day as zombies and by Thursday are unable to really generate excitement about anything or that we sleep 10 hours a day on the weekends seems to mean nothing.

But in the end, do we accomplish that much?

I'm confronted with this myself. One of my resolutions is to get more sleep. At first I thought this would be an easy exercise: after all, I have no problems sleeping over the weekends. So into bed I go - and wake up. At 12:00, 2:00, 4:15, and 5:10. Each time I have to consciously lay there and decide I will not let my mind get agitated or active, that I will go to sleep, that waking and going will not really solve anything.

By adding sleep, I am surrendering control. I am choosing to act on the premise that sleep in more important than whatever "activity" I would be doing.

And an act of faith? By choosing to sleep, by forcing myself to do so, I am essentially admitting to God that I am finite - and He is not. He can accomplish all that He wants or needs me to do with my sleep or waking. "It is vain" says the Psalmist "That you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to His beloved sleep" (Psalm 127:2).

So tonight will find me like last night, undoubtedly popping awake for what I could being doing - and then, in a supreme act of faith in the providence and omnipotence of God, closing my eyes and going back to sleep.

Goal Setting

Confession: I've never been very good at setting goals.

I'd like to think I'm better. Every year, I start out with the best of intentions: things I think I want (or need) to accomplish, which I interpret as goals. And then, at the end of every year, I tend to look back, wondering which (if any of them) I accomplished and where the year went anyway. So last night, as I sat trying to work over my 2012 goals with varying results - mostly "What am I trying to really accomplish?" - I started going through my collection of books that deal with subject.

Enter Goal Setting 101 by Gary Ryan Blair. It's a short pamphlet really - 40 pages or so - but actually quite as useful as books three times its length. Mr. Blair has a short and succinct definition of a goal, something that works well for my simple way of working. A goal is defined as "An end toward which you direct specific effort" and consists of:

1) An accomplishment to be achieved.

2) A measurable outcome.

3) A specific data and time to accomplish the goal.

That's it. And that's pretty easy.

It took me a bit of time to adjust myself to writing them in the fashion. I'm used to doing them more in the form of what I'd like to do, not as a specific 3 step outcome. But what I found as I continued down this path is that things started to be put in a fashion and sense that I could understand. I not only identified what I wanted to do (I always seemed to do that), but also what that would actually look like (the outcome) and what time frame I wanted to accomplish it in.

I'm starting small this year doing this process (another issue I have, a separate one, is maybe trying to put too many things on my plate). And I've today to work on the ones that were not so easy for me to do last night, the ones that are either more personal or have greater implications.

Still, at least for this moment, I begin the year feeling more confident that I will see some of the results of the end of the year I want to - more confident than I have in years.

The Last Workday of the Year

It is The Last Workday of the Year.

The Last Workday of the Year shares many of the same aspects as The Last Day of Work Before Christmas. Most financial generation is over except for the billing. The list of what has to get down this week has continued to become shortened as the week has progressed, as much from "I can really do this next year" as "I accomplished this".

In their heart of hearts, people are waiting for the official announcement: "It's the last day of the year. Let's go home." They won't say this, of course, but they'll find other ways to review it - periodic counts of how many people are in the building, followed up by another count to see how many have left.

Even I am lingering this morning over my coffee as I prepare to get ready for work. The traffic has been great this week - the most direct route has only been 25 minutes, which it never is - so getting there "on time" is not the issue. And I, too, am mentally making my list as I prepare to get things chopped off or moved to next year.

Because in the end, today changes nothing. The reviews are already in, and 99.9% of my actions are accounted for. It will be a paperwork shuffle if anything - reviewing things that basically won't get done anyway than next year, as how much can you do in one day?

Is there a sense of accomplishment to this year of work? Not really. I can point to a great deal that I accomplished this year, but hardly with a sense of accomplishment. Why? Because there's no enduring sense that a difference was made. Already the projects and common daily tasks for next year are stacked higher than I can reach them. The year past then blends into the year to come: one long experience of projects which, so often, seem to lead nowhere.

Ironically, the greatest anticipation of this day is simply when we do get to leave. It is one of 3 days of the year where the possibility of leaving early exists - a something to look forward to in the midst of the seamless transfer from last year to this.

So Happy Last Workday of the Year. May all your tasks be completed.

Making Progress, Meaningless Work

"Making progress on meaningless work doesn't boost engagement; people must feel that they are contributing to something they value. " - Teresa Amabile and Steve Kramer

Progress on meaningless work - what a seemingly counter intuitive concept. By well-acknowledged definition, progress always means moving forward, moving towards an end goal, moving towards something better. But what if that progress is in something that has no meaning. Is it progress?

To use an example in my own life, if I complete the review of reams of documents which mean nothing outside the small circle of company I am in, have I really made any progress? Or have I just completed a task which more than likely will be filed away in a memory stick as part of an electronic archive in some years? Yes, I have checked items off my "to do" list, but have I really contributed anything in a meaningful way?

Yes, I agree with the hypothesis that such progress doesn't boost engagement of anyone; but I think the more fundamental question is "Does it represent true progress?"

As an employee, I want to be spending my time on things that matter, that make a difference or improve something. The same is true for me as a human as well, I suppose: I want to spend my time on things that are meaningful and involve progress (although often these are things of the heart: my cheese making, though I'm becoming more skilled at it, is hardly going to change the world). And even as a Christian, I want to make progress and be more obedient in the things that Christ desires, not in things which are trappings of the world or the mores and preferences of people.

Money cannot be a substitute for meaning; progress on the meaningless cannot be substitute for effort that makes an impact.

A Whiff of Grapeshot

Where do I want to go next year?

2012 already stands to have the scent of change, a "whiff of grapeshot" about it. Already - and it is not even the New Year yet - A' Bhan Ghradh has posted her intent to leave, and the unraveling of work has thus begun. I find it unlikely that this time next year my place of employ will resemble anything like it stands today. Looking at my circle of friends, I predict changes for many involved -Uisdean Ruadh, Snowflake, Bogha Frois, maybe even Otis (but in his case, only more success than he has already achieved).

Which leads me to the question above: where do I want to go next year?

Among the things I've managed to gather over the course of a career and life, one is that it never pays to be taken by surprise by events. Work environments can change in the blink of an eye with even the departure of one - and once changed, they become something different and not always pleasant.

Change is coming: what will I do about it?

I started to push my goals out onto paper last night. In general, they ones that flowed out were not ones that particularly surprised me: Physical, Financial, Personal, and even Professional were similar to years past (telling me that I really have never achieved any of them) with one small exception: the "Become a Published Author" moved from a personal to a professional goal.

That one scares me a little bit (all good goals should, right?), as it is 1) way outside my comfort zone and 2) making a declaration of sorts - the declaration that in some form or fashion, I'd like to write for a living. Scary stuff.

The two remaining categories - familial and spiritual - hover in the background, nagging at me a bit further. These, too, are areas of change for 2012 - or need to be. Familial needs to continue to be around relationships and doing things together (I am still stunned by the amount of interruption the layoff and move away put in in place); spiritual - I'm not sure yet what this part means, other than my commitment to Christ needs to be 1) Deeper and 2) More real.

The New Year is coming, and change is coming with it. Will I be ready - or I will swept away surprised that change came at all?

A Father's Gift

I think the most surprising gift I got this year was the one I didn't anticipate from the person I didn't anticipate it from.

I am a father of daughters. I have attempted, in my broken and fairly unorganized way, to raise them in such a way that they learn to stretch their wings and explore, to believe in God and the plan He has for them through the talents they've been given, that they learn to feel confident in using their talents and trying new things, and that they learn that their talents and gifts are not only for themselves alone, but for the good of others as well. Through them and their talents, they express the love of God to a world desperately in need of it.

A tall order to be sure, and one which I'm never quite sure I'm fulfilling well. There are times I see hints of it, but a great deal of time as well where it feels as if one is tilting at windmills. Do such things really have impacts on their lives of our daughters?

Enter the Christmas present. Enter Buttercup.

I get to cheat in a way that you, gentle readers, do not: I get to see her daily posts on Facebook. I have watched over the last few years as she undertook a dream which she had put aside - to get a college degree in teaching - which has morphed into her life's calling helping autistic children.

And here's the cool part: she speaks constantly in her writing of her father.

He passed on in July 2010 and so has never (physically) seen all that Buttercup has done in this time. But that hardly means he is not present in her mind: nay, her writings and thoughts drip of him with so many entries; even this year at Christmas, she speaks with high praise of a gift she received, a quilt made of his shirts, a physical reminder of his presence.

I say that his influence continues because she says that his influence continues in her life to this day: in her gardening, in her service to others, in her faith. She keeps on her desk a wooden apple, a constant reminder of him.

And a great comfort it has been to me as I work through what so often seems to be the wreckage of my life, hoping in some way or shape to inculcate what I would wish that my children would know and internalize long after I'm gone, to see that in at least one case that I know of and can attest to, such a thing actually can happen: we can do what we hope to do.

And that hope, that example, is the greatest gift I received at the end of one long year and the beginning of the next: lessons can be learned and lives influenced (and others therefore changed) by the example and lessons of a father.

The Year of Living Courageously

Dear Friends,

And so the end of another year is upon us, the looming gift of 366 days (Leap Year, you know) an unopened packaging waiting even as we close down the last week of this year.

Perhaps you, like me, are examining the year that has gone past, realizing that there was too little done for you wanted to do or what you needed to do and too much done that which had no lasting import; you find that the end of the year this year leaves you much in the same position that the beginning of the year did.

Let us take an oath, you and I: Let us make this The Year of Living Courageously.

Why Courageously? Because the world is in sore need of you. It is in sore need of the talents and gifts that you (and I) can supply.

And truth be told, you (and I) need to live up to a better and higher level. Truth be told, if we are where we were at the beginning of the year, we've actually declined, because we've lost a whole year of living.

But I warn you up front: The greatest obstacle to living courageously is not those around you (oh, they'll mock or discourage). It's not the circumstances that will seem to be against you (they will always be against you somehow). And it's not the tides of history that seemingly sweep away any change you desire to make in yourself or the world out to the sea of anonymity (these tides have always swept through human history).

No. The greatest obstacle will be yourself.

Courage is like any other talent. We have to train ourselves to use it. And the first time we use it - the first time we try to live courageously - it will feel like death. We'll feel as if we're a tender shoot, sitting in the hot New Home sun, withering under intense heat of the scrutiny of others but even more so under the scrutiny of ourselves. We'll feel embarrassed and unworthy and a failure.

We'll survive, of course. And we'll do it a second time. And a third time. And it will feel like dying again.

But over time, what we'll find is that courage is like any other muscle: use it enough and an iron-hard conviction will develop within us, something that is no longer swayed by the opinions of others - or the opinions of ourselves. Living courageously will become part of each and every action that we take.

I don't ask about your goals or aspirations or dreams. Live courageously, and these will flow out of you as naturally as breathing.

A few are born courageous - the rest must become so by effort.

Your Obedient Servant,

Toirdhealbheach Beucail

Christmas Away

This Christmas is a first in 44 years. It's the first Christmas I won't spending with my extended family.

For the course of my life, we've always been with extended family: with my parents (of course) and sister and my maternal grandparents through high school. In college, I came home for a bigger set of family - aunts, uncle, cousins, eventually a brother in-law as well. When The Ravishing Mrs. TB and I got married, I added another layer: in-laws and sister in-law and another set of aunt, uncle and cousins.

The arrival of children just meant we went more places: one day with my parents, one day with my in-laws, and occasional meanderings through the homes of other relatives. They were only 2 hours apart, so it hardly a stretch that we wouldn't see everyone during the Christmas season.

And this year, we will be by ourselves in New Home.

I'm not necessarily overly sad about it - I mean, compared to the sacrifices so many people actually make, this is a little thing. And it's not as if we're alone - we have Na Clann, which I'm sure will keep things interesting enough with the de-packaging and assembly of various Christmas arrivals. They'll not be an absence of joy or Christmas here.

I suppose the thing that made me start about it more is simply that it is happening - the sort of milestone that one realizes one has passed only after the car has flashed by it. It's more the realization of something being different than something missing that makes it interesting to me.

Sometimes the change in the season of life is so subtle that it escapes even ourselves.

The Last Day of Work Before Christmas

Today is The Last Day of Work Before Christmas.

The Last Day of Work Before Christmas is always a somewhat confused time. On the one hand, there are things that must get accomplished, especially in light of the fact that many people take the week after Christmas off, so signature and approvals will not be available before the end of the year. It's a madhouse of scurrying, writing, cajoling and whining to get things accomplished either now- or next year.

On the other hand, there is a sense that it is almost a day of non-work. Personnel on site are always about 40% of what is normally there, so many things simply can't get done. There's almost a sense of a holiday at work as well, the feeling that the clock is slowly ticking down to freedom. People take longer than they usually do to stop and drop off paperwork to chat for a few minutes with gloating or despairing depending on how much time they are taking off. Individually decisions are made about how much work actually can get accomplished by the end of the year: by 12 PM, people starting moving things off of their lists with the thought "I can do it next week when no-one is here" or "I can do it next year".

The one almost universal tradition - almost everywhere I've worked - starts around 2 PM or so, when people start checking their computers for the ever-hoped for "Let's close early" e-mail. In some places it's merely a periodic check; in others, work almost slows to nothing as individuals cluster like quail, wondering if it will happen or when.

But inevitably something happens - the "get out of work early" message or simply the winding down of people's day. By the time the end of the day rolls around, the workplace is silent - not just the silence of people being absent, but the more profound silence of people dropping their work cares and sorrows on the way out the door.

Writing by Christmas Tree Lights

The two weeks around Christmas are always unusual for anyone that has children, especially when they have holidays. The normal bustle I would associate with this time of morning has completely disappeared; everyone is sleeping in late today. The house is quiet, with the exception of Kiki the Pseudo-Eagle, who is testing the locked door of her cage to see if by chance it's open this time.

It's a overcast morning here in New Home: it is the cold of fog but not the its misty covering, the deadening without the blocking of vision. It's quiet as well: the vacation seems to have extended to those around us, as I can hardly hear the sounds of any cars motoring off to school or work.

Which leaves myself and the Christmas Tree.

The joy of Christmas Tree lights is that they bring a multi-coloured twinkle to the writing experience. They're not much for lighting any keyboard, but the red, green, yellow and blue play at the edges of my vision as I type. They bring a sort of seasonal cheerfulness to the morning as they silently light the coming of the Saviour. They cast a happy sort of silent cheer throughout the living room and throughout my heart.

There's a sense of peace I can't fully define as I sit in this silent house which is filled with my family at rest, as the pets quietly munch away or occasionally chirp, the Christmas Tree lights reflecting off the bottoms of my eyelashes and patchworking my sweatshirt with colour. I know the day is coming but somehow I cannot find it in myself to become concerned about it.

Sometimes, it seems, the greatest task is not so much doing as it is resting in the moment.

Short Entry Today?

Stupid Thunderstorms:

Making planes and people late.

All this and work too.

On The Road

I find I like traveling alone less and less.

Business travel is becoming more and more of a less desirable option. It wasn't always so - at one time, I was happy and excited to go. I liked going to new companies and new places, seeing how they did things, and then returning. I like what went along with it - hotels, eating out, travel points.

But now I find it much more of an undesirable option.

Why? The single biggest reason is that I now begrudge the time away from my family. Every night I'm here is a night I'm not with them, a night I'm not in familiar surroundings.

I like traveling much less than I used to as well. Not just the airport experience since 2011. The planes are more packed, the waits are longer, people and their darn "it can roll on, so it's a carry-on" - even if it takes an entire compartment's worth of space - are more annoying.

But it's the fact of being alone as well. I don't really like to eat out by myself, or really do anything alone - typically I'll find what's in the hotel to eat or right near it, get my food, then scuttle back to my room. I'm not one to find enjoyment in the "freedom" of being temporarily unencumbered by responsibilities.

Do I still like seeing other companies? Of course I do. That part is still very enjoyable to me. It's just the all the parts in between that have slowly lost their luster.

A Long Week

Slumped over coffee,

I look up in exhaustion:

Friday already?

Rain and the Universe

I woke up early this morning. After flopping around for a while, I got up to avoid disturbing The Ravishing Mrs. TB. I came downstairs and performed my usual morning routine - Read, Pray, a little theology, a little language - even a bit slower than I usually do them, as it was early and I had lots of time, right? Made Coffee. Unloaded the Dishwasher. Fed the Rabbits. And then finally got dressed to go running.

Literally, as I was tying my shoes, I heard the sound of rain starting to pour coming from outside.

I went outside and looked: sure enough, the skies had opened up and started dumping the rain that they were promising all night.

I stood there for a moment in the door frame, looking at the rain as I rocked back and forth in my tennis shoes, trying to decide if it was just a burst or would continue. The rain showed no signs of reducing in intensity in the gray pre-dawn - in fact, it seemed to increase in intensity as if to mock my thoughts. I sighed, went back inside, and grabbed a cup of coffee instead, contemplating the timing that caused it to rain almost the second I planned to go out, after 1.5 hours of activities inside with no rain at all.

There really are times that one feels the very universe is opposed to one's efforts.

Christmas Rain

December rain's warm,

like the coffee in my hand:

Can this be winter?

Iaido in the Mist

One aspect of New Home that continues to surprise me is the temperature fluctuations. In a one week period, we have probed the depths of the high 20's as well as getting up to later to the low 70's. It is a novelty to me that such swings can occur when one is used to a "fixed" season of the year.

This morning was one of those mornings. I peered out the window and discovered a fog, a mist which had covered the world in damp yet was surprisingly warm. Warmer than it's been in a while in the morning, I grabbed my bokken and headed outside.

I love the world in a fog - more so in a warm fog, as it turns out. The light from streetlights and outdoor lights is diffused, pouring through the gaps in the fence on visible chains of photons. The sound seems muffled as well - not just the quiet of morning, but the deadening of all sound.

The treat for me was the moisture- so much that it dripped as a slow rainfall from the oaks hidden in the foggy half-light.

It was, I decided, perfect Iaido weather.

Assume the position. Migi, Hidari. Hand to tsuba and tsuka as I turn my body and step migi. Saibiki as I pull the saya down from the blade.

And plop! A large drop of moisture lands squarely on my head (the samurai tales never mention that). Shake my head, continue on.

And so I move through the morning mist, drawing and sheathing, cutting and blocking, moving forward and back as the bokken scatters the diffused light and water into invisible waves which make the plunging drops of collected moisture plunge to the ground.

There are times - all too seldom -when in practicing a martial art one reaches the point where not only is one's movement in synch, but the very atmosphere one practices in is equally balanced, where the movement of one's self and the movement of the world around them come together to create an experience which while being simple practice session shines to the very core of the art itself.

Today was such a day.

Clicking

There are moments in life when things just click.

I've learned such moments are random and unplanned. I can't get everything in order, lay out my plans, and then suddenly things just work. I wish I could - it would make things a great deal easier.

It comes at odd times- in the middle of a Saturday, or on a Tuesday at 2:00 PM, or on a Thursday evening. That sense that life is working, that progress is being made.

I wish I knew what created that sense, or what maintains it. I'd like to believe it's planning, or effort - but too often it seems to be neither of those. Instead - and this is the most surprising thing - it literally seems to be something from God. A sense that I am doing what I am supposed to be doing, even if it doesn't always feel like it is the thing I want to be doing.

I wonder if too much of our personal discontentment stems from expectations we put on our lives ("Disillusionment is the child of illusion" - Chip Ingram) and less from the actual circumstances therein.

Like so much else, I'm not sure. All I can say with certainty is that sometimes the less hard I try, the more things seem to work well. At times, one can almost hear the "click" of one part of life sliding in to another.

Sharing Space Again

I seem to be reaching a tipping point of sorts.

I'm finding parts of myself in the last two weeks that I don't believe I've seen in years. This fellow that occasionally speaks out of my mouth and acts with body is not the guy that usually lives in here. He's more decisive, more vocal, more willing to speak up and more willing to act.

I have no idea where this fellow wants to go. I'm not sure he does at this point either - or maybe he does and he's just not telling me about it. He seems to act like he has some kind of plan, or at least some kind of idea what the direction he wants us to go is.

If I had to guess, he's that fellow that lived here some years ago - back in the days when things were for the choosing rather than for the getting along (see yesterday's post). He's certainly much braver than I usually am, more willing to be confrontational if there is an idea or subject worth discussing instead of just sitting back and whimpering about it or stewing after the fact.

I'll be honest - I kind of like him. It's nice to have some company here, especially some company that (for once) doesn't tear down the current inhabitant or make him feel guilty about not doing things or just sigh and feel hopeless along with him. This fellow just picks up and starts going in a direction, dragging the rest of me behind him.

Sometimes we lead ourselves. Sometimes we get led by ourselves. As long as it's forward movement, I'm not sure that it matters.

Calls

I'm starting to get calls from recruiters again. I'm not sure that it's not the end of the year rather than my particular resume or skill set, but coming in they are.

It's a good practice for no other reason than it makes one get into better practice when speaking. It's also good this time around because it is making me more formally evaluate what I really want.

In the past there seems to have been a progression in why I changed jobs: learning new skills (1996-1999), following a mentor (2000-2004), doing my own thing (2004-2005), and then just finding a job to keep the bills paid (2005-present). If I examine that progression (never thought of it that way before), what I see is that my choices in why I do things have gotten less and less - I've chosen less to advance a career than for my own personal reasons (and eating, I suppose, does constitute a personal reason).

One's own personal reasons are not bad things to be sure - but they can interfere with life if there's no master plan behind the choices - and more often than not, that is me.

So as I speak to these people I'm asking the question: what is it that I'm seeking in a position? More money? Sure, that'd be nice. Location? Yes, if it's convenient. But more often than not, I'm talking in terms of career advancement, of what I want to accomplish with and through any new position.

Jim Rohn, a very wise man, once said "The only way things are going to change for you is when you change". It's not the change of job or location or position I'm really seeking, I suppose: it's how I can and will change as I go to that position.

Friend, Manager, Leader

Finding one reason I may have been brought here yesterday.

I am having an internal confrontation in myself between being a friend, a manager, and a leader. One I do very well, one I do passably well, and one I don't do very well at all. It is an issue because it impacts not only my professional life, but my personal life as well.

I realized last week that at the end of December, I will have a manager for 10 years. This is an exceptionally long time to be a manager, especially as I have moved from company to company several times. Originally I came up with other reasons, like it was different bosses, or I came out of the industry and in, or that I came to a new portion of the industry. But in considering it, I have begun to wonder if it is not if fact something within me that keeps me here.

Not that I want to be something beyond a manager necessarily (yes, it's inevitably more money) for the title, but I am realizing that I want more of the personal development that inevitably goes along with it. A leader or manager - a good one, anyway - has skill sets which are valuable in every walk of life, not just in the working world.

And so I sit, looking at the walls that I have become pressed up against and am unable to get through. I intuitively understand that I have reached this limit and that I need to go through the wall, but I do not see the mechanism that I can use to get over, under or around it.

The other issue I need to confront - the one that weighs heavily on me - is the changes that will inevitably occur.

I have a need to be liked. On the one hand, it's a great tool for friendship and certain managerial and departmental relationships - after all, a pleasant person is always better to deal with, and people pleasers will go long lengths to be pleasant. On the other hand, one becomes handicapped into making certain decisions by the fact one is not dealing with reports or employees but friends. As well, if one simply starts changing it creates issues with the ones around you, who do not always understand or appreciate the change and so react as it has upset the relational applecart.

And so I seem to sit here at this precipice, hanging over the edge of doing and becoming. realizing that action must be taken if I am to grow, but shying away from the actions and all the consequences they entail.

Christmas and Revelation

Every year at this time, I read about the end - at the beginning.

If you'll flip to your "Read Through the Bible in A Year" section in the back of your text, you'll find that the month of December is largely taken up by the book of Revelation (no surprise, it is the last book in the Bible). Every year for last 5 years at least, I've found myself here at Christmas.

I realized this morning as I read Revelation 1 that it is an interesting contrast. Here, in the season of the year when we celebrate the advent of Christ, I find myself reading about His return.

The contrasts abound: At His birth, almost no-one recognized His arrival except His parents and some shepherds; in His Second Coming, no-one will be able to help but recognize Him. At His birth He came as a humble peasant child; in His Second Coming He will come in the majesty and glory of the Godhead. At His birth he came powerless; at His Second Coming He comes as the Omnipotent Conquering King of the Universe.

A curious paradox at this time of celebration and mirth, of Christmas trees and carols and eggnog and good cheer.

Surely we should celebrate His coming? Of course - the Coming of Christ, the God-Man who paved the way for the salvation of man, is worthy of remembrance and celebration - not just now, but every day of the year.

But I wonder in our haste to filled with the seasonal spirit if we forget, we betray to the world that our focus is always less than what it should be. We see the First Coming and celebrate; we know the Second Coming is nigh (it's always nearer than it was yesterday), yet we often bury it beneath a weight of eschatalogical words or treat is as the something which is someday coming, but shouldn't concern us now.

We forget - at our peril - that for Israel as well, the Messiah's arrival was something so long in coming that they also eventually failed to look for that which was promised.

Taking Time

I engaged my reading sense this weekend.

On a random splurge at Half Price Books I obtained two books: one Neuromancer by William Gibson, which I hadn't read in many years, the other Shackleton's Way: Leadership Lessons from the Great Antarctic Explorer by Margot Morrell and Stephanie Capparell. It's been a while since I looked to just buying two books for the sheer pleasure of reading.

And read I did. Neuromancer was consumed within 4 hours (including a nap); Shackleton's Way was 2/3's done by the time I left for church on Sunday. I reveled in the opportunity to just sit and drink in good literature.

I compare that with this morning, where I tried to read a bit more of Shackleton's Way as part of my morning reading as I enjoyed it so much. It wasn't the same: I got some reading done, but it seemed I was hurrying so much that I barely had time to enjoy what I was reading, let alone absorb it as I had done the previous day.

The difference surprised me greatly. Same book, same me, but different circumstances in reading. In one, I read purely out of enjoyment with no time frame; in the other, I read in an allocated time frame, seeking to fit something else in an already loaded schedule. The results, both in my sense of enjoyment and my sense of learning, speak for themselves.

This vignette points out to me a core issue in my life: when I try to fit too much in, I scarcely enjoy any of it, whereas if I take the time to focus on what I am doing without a sense of "15 minutes", I derive true joy and learning.

It is not, apparently, that I cannot do many things in short bursts, it's that I cannot do them well or with a sense of gaining anything from them.

When, I wonder, was the time that reading became something I had to do in small bursts, rather than something I could do over longer periods of concentration?

Missing Christmas

Probably missing my Christmas Spirit again.

When I was young, it always felt like Christmas took forever to get there - and once it did, I can remember that it had a definite sense about it being a different time of year: the music, the food, the decorations and Christmas tree, the reminders of why we have Christmas at all around me.

Now, December is not only just another month of the year, it's often the worst month of the year. Every project that was not completed suddenly needs to be done in 20 working days. Music gets ploughed under the movement from here to there. Food becomes something you hope someone else is making because you don't have the time, and decorating becomes a chore. It often feels like Christmas has been reduced to a two day event: Christmas Eve and Christmas.

I wish I knew how to effectively address the problem. I don't really: it's not as if I can march into my place of business and say "I'm working only this hard. Projects are not completed: not my fault. It's Christmas, after all. " I suspect the conversation after that would be short, sweet, and involve a cardboard box.

But surely there is something to be done, probably within myself (as it most often is required). If I cannot seem to muster the ability to celebrate Christmas as I should in the midst of life, perhaps the problem lies with what I expect of Christmas and how I view it. Christ is no less real today than He is the other 11 months of the year. The fact I feel I can celebrate His advent less than normal may be an indicator of how much I value Him rather than how much time I feel I a allocated.

Time Prison

I sat down last night (after leaving work late) to review exactly what I have to do at work before the end of the year. By my calculations, I have 250 odd things to accomplish in 20 days. Add to this at least half of that time already has some activity consuming part of all of the day, and you'll begin to understand why I gave a deep sigh when I finished the list.

I'd love to say that the opportunity is there for me to push some of those things off, that somewhere there is some give for me to fall back on. The reality is that I don't think there is. Any backup is called me.

I'm having to start an activity I am not really good at: scheduling each day, every day.

Simply put, now that I have my list I will start checking off what I have to do by the end of the year, figuring days, and saying "on this day, I have to do this and this". And then do that and that - not run off and do other things, not allow myself to be interrupted by others and their tasks, but just keep on and finish what I am doing.

This will be an interesting (if somewhat tiresome) exercise, as I have never tried (or had) to do this level of planning before. I've no idea if it will work or not. I've no idea if I will survive or not.

But if time is the limiting factor, then I need to spend it as carefully as I can - even if that means totally regulating it.

Centering

How does one become an effective thermostat instead of a thermometer?

I've been pondering this as I have tried to measure my reactions after coming back from a five day vacation to work. The first day - a half day - was fine. I was able to maintain my center and control how others made me feel. By the end of the second day I was seemingly right back where I started from before I left, feeling overwhelmed and angry.

What happened? How did I move from being a thermostat (controlling my emotions) to a thermometer (allowing outside influences to affect my emotions)?

Physical impact? Sure. My sleep pattern was almost immediately disrupted during my vacation as soon as my brain figured out work was coming up. I've stated it before and will again, physical exhaustion is one of my worst enemies.

Overwhelmed? Again, this is probably a factor. Moving from meeting to meeting, making a presentation, getting given 10 new items on the my list with short deadlines, all conspire to tear down any attempt at control.

But the biggest factor, it seems to me, was the inability to center.

From the time I walk in the door to almost the time I leave, I am constantly busy, either doing my own tasks or working on the tasks of others. On occasion I have lines of people outside of my office, waiting one at a time to bring me their problem for resolution - and right after, another crisis which needs resolution immediately.

What this leads to is being rocked back and forth from crisis to emergency to mundane tasks - all without the buffer of taking a moment to stop and think.

One of the two operative words in "Self Control" is "control" - but to have control, you need to be able to pay attention. One does not drive a car while writing a blog post with any degree of success.

So this is my task, or at least one of them: to start, before each new thing, by taking a breath and minute to find and readjust myself to the task at hand.

I cannot change the situation directly. I can change myself.

Excursis: Reaching Out

Facebook performed one of their periodic reboots on me sometime between last week and this. When I went to my business page I found that my postings are no longer "viewed" by people, they have "reached" people.

"Reaching out" is one of those terms that has become vogue in the last five years. Consultants, sales people, and recruiters no longer call or contact you, they "reach out" to you. I don't know why the term bothers me, but it really does.

Reach, for those who were wondering, can be used as a transitive or intransitive verb. As a transitive verb, it means to stretch out, touch with a part of the body, to pick up , to hand over, to make an impression on, to communicate. As an intransitive verb it means to stretch or strain after someone, to project, to arrive.

I suppose the impression is supposed to be that reaching out is equivalent of communicating, that somehow reaching out gives a more personal cast to a communication, that I am am not just "communicating" with you but rather am putting forth my proverbial hand in the hope that you, too, will reach back to me.

Maybe it's the implication of a relationship. Reaching at any of the definitions above implies some level of contact between the two individuals, be it two lovers or a politician with their constituents. Either way, in my world such a contact has not occurred: you're calling me, you're writing me. That's not a personal contact. You're presuming a relationship that doesn't exist.

The other thing I think I find bothersome is the the implication of reaching out. Either 1) You're a superior reaching down; or 2) You're someone needy who's reaching up. In either case, that's not really what I want or need in a contact. I need honesty and equality: you've something that I might need, or I've something you need. In the context we're discussing, this is a business relationship, nothing more. Treat it as one.

I'm sure I'm a single rock in the incoming tide of language use, and I will be one the one to go under the tide of new language usage. But usage or no, I will not surrender the basic premise that relationships are built, not presumed, and that "reaching" or "reaching out" involves a level of personal contact far beyond the use it is being pressed to.

Back To Reality

My parents have just left.

Conflicting feelings about it. On the one hand, I am sorry to see them go, as I am sorry to leave when we are visiting them. Visits twice a year when one is used to twice monthly visits is a hard thing.

Sad as well because their departure seems to herald the return of the ordinary. The humdrum. The "Life as we know it 50 weeks a year".

Even as I sit and write this, the workload I have not done and the presentation I have to do tomorrow are creeping into my consciousness. A raft of exercises- petty at best, irrelevant at worst - are waiting for me on the other side of noon, clamoring for energy and attention.

The thing I don't want - the thing I fear - is that I will slide back into my "Life as we know it" stance, that the thoughts and ideas that may have percolated over the last week will be washed out to see like a sandcastle.

If I want to see more significance, I need to find the way to the significant act - such as the people in my life - and leave the insignificant - such as a report on metrics that no-one truly cares about and everyone forgets - behind.

Paralysis

I feel paralyzed.

Paralyzed by what, I'm not sure. It's not quite indecision, nor is it completely from the choices I perceive I have. But it is definitely a paralysis of life.

I find it hard to engage in any activity, even one's that I usually enjoy. There seems to be a certain pointlessness to any activity, a pointless made more poignant by the fact that large portions of my life - work, for example, simply is at it without recourse.

How do I shake this paralysis of action?

It stems, I trow, from a lack of direction - any lack of direction - in my own life. That has to be the first thing - related, I suppose, to my thoughts here about goals of some kind, any kind. And a sense, I suppose, that in a great many ways I have reached the end of the line with where I am - that the road I am on only leads to a cliff over a canyon I cannot bridge.

It is time for that (for me) most ugly of tasks: making a decision and sticking with it.

The writing is clearly there. Anywhere else that I am going to go requires me to pick a path - a different path, in most cases - and follow it through.

Two of my weakest skills. Lovely.

But this is not sustainable either. This vague sense of being able to do nothing, of having neither the incentive nor the desire to take any action, is more bothersome and disheartening than most people can imagine.

Black Fridays of The Soul

Ah, Black Friday: that shopping day of the year where stores hope to move product and shoppers (including The Ravishing Mrs. TB) hope to find bargains.

Do we ever have Black Fridays of the soul?

Do we ever open our souls to others - indeed, even to ourselves - for true review and reflection? Or do we ever go out and actively seek to know others and ourselves with the same dogged determination we will pursue a bargain?

It's odd that we have a day dedicated to the pursuit of material items, yet we (or at least most of us, myself included) never pursue the knowledge of self and others with the same intensity. At best we may do it once in a while or at the beginning of a relationship; at worst, we do it never.

My challenge to myself: take a day (I've already got one in mind: August 2nd, Failure Day) and plan to be absent from all your normal activities. Do it alone, do it with someone else - but just take one day to pursue a deeper knowledge of yourself or someone else.

I am willing to guarantee the results will be far more rewarding than the item you bought at Black Friday that now lies forgotten.

Thanksgiving 2011

And so it comes: Thanksgiving 2011. I have, as in years past, a good list to be thankful for:

- The Ravishing Mrs. TB

- Na Clann

- The menagerie that inhabits our home: Syrah the Mighty, the rabbits Snowball Midnight and Bella, Tink the Hamster, and Kiki the Parakeet.

- The fact that I have a job, even if it's not my heart's desire.

- The house we live in, the cars we drive, and all that God has graciously provided for us.

- That my own parents can come and spend Thanksgiving with us.

- Our larger family scattered throughout the US.

- For the new things I've done this year: cheese making, running a 5K, the Highland Games.

- Our church.

- Na Clann's school.

- Our health (too often ignored until it's gone).

- Iaido.

- All of the fine things we've discovered here in New Home.

- Our friends, here and scattered throughout the country.

- Salvation and the gift of Christ.

- The creation in which we live.

- And, as always, the opportunity to write.

It is good that at least once a year we take the opportunity to look and consider how much good we really do have to be thankful for.

It's the Most Goal-Wonderful Time of the Year

The Thanksgiving Holiday usually signifies the official start of the holiday season. For me, it also traditionally signifies the countdown for next year's goals.

6 weeks for goal planning? I'm slow about how I choose them - working them, reworking them, trying to find a third way with them.

So slow, in fact, that I never got my 2011 goals on paper.

This is something that has not happened in 5 years or more. Why? Not because I couldn't come up with any goals, but rather I have lost heart in writing them. In other words, I did not create goals because I did not believe that I could reach them.

Perhaps this is the core of my despondency today - my lack of hope stemming from my lack of belief that I can achieve anything other than just getting by.

But is that legitimate? Is it legitimate to say that I will not aspire to anything because there is simply no way for me to achieve it? If that is my logic, then I have hobbled myself out of the gate before the race has begun. Just because goals and aspirations are not where my life is right now does not mean they are impossible, it just means I'll have to work all the harder to achieve them.

Part of that, I think, is simply due to being co-opted by the system in which I work, where there is little direct relationship between the amount of effort put in and any rewards that come out. All the effort in the world can be sunk in; the result is only more work and little notice, the dull hope of a small increase in pay and bonus.

But again, that is the fault of where I work, not what I do. I have worked plenty of other locations where those rules did apply, and the effort was noticed and rewarded.

But if I believe it's possible (not that it's a universal law, but it is highly predictable), that still means one has to have actual goals to shoot for - not ideas, not thoughts, not concepts, but actual goals. And they need to be goals that are actually larger than I think is possible, as I found in an excellent T.S. Eliot quote this morning: "Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."

"Make no small plans" said Daniel Burnham, "for they have no magic to stir men's blood...Make big plans, aim high in hope, and work." Here's to an early 2012 that will give direction and purpose.

Bleak

Feeling at the end of the proverbial rut this morning.

Every - and I mean every - path seems to lead precisely nowhere. I am in angst of going to work today (it really was that bad of a day on Friday), yet in angst of the fear of something terrible happening at work - or not happening at all. Every activity of mine lies at my feet, it's path run to the point of a seeming blockade. All paths lead to walls, and the swirl of activities has become nothing more than a empty sound, a plain devoid of all.

I cannot see a future from here. This is the most bothersome for me. I feel bereft of anything remotely resembling hope - just a long bland tunnel of doing, rather than being.

In watching Avatar The Last Airbender with the kids last night, there is a point where one of the Master's tells a protagonist that thanks to her commitment, discipline and hard work, she has become a success. I look at my own life and feel even more lost, because I cannot see a place in the last years where any of the those factors has made any of a difference. Commitment, discipline, and hard work only seem to keep me in some kind of holding pattern, without any sense of going anywhere.

Where do I find hope? How do I locate some sense of direction, some shining light on a hill that seems more than just another star, long out of reach?

Friendship is Where You Find It

The bulk of my friends in the years since I graduated from high school have been friends I found at work.

This is a stunning thought to me - stunning because the line of work I am in is not something that I would have ever really chosen, let alone thought about going into in school. I would have thought I would have ended up in something like I studied, dealing with people who dealt in thought and concepts and interests as I did.

Instead, I have found my friends to be in this industry I did not anticipate and so often feel out to sea in. Perhaps it is the fact that one spends so much time with one's coworkers that some relationship is predetemined. Perhaps it is because of the fact that in my industry I deal with intelligent, quirky individuals which appeal to me. Perhaps it is simply that this is where dregs of humanity congregate (of which I am one). But never the less, this is where I have found them.

One wonders if perhaps (in one of those pre-ordained acts God seems to spring on us) the whole reason God allowed me to be here in this industry, wandering from place to place (and indeed from Old Home to New Home)was the fact that He knew that this is where I'd find the people I needed to find to make it through my life. Another reminder, I suppose, of how much God knows about what He is doing - and how little we do, and how often I get these two concepts reversed.

Cold Front

Early morning run:

I wish the wind would drive me

as overhead clouds.

Success

Sometimes letting go of our successes can be as difficult and freeing as letting go of our failures.

Successes can be tricky things. On the one hand, we want to succeed. Success feed our self confidence. Successes give us the sense of accomplishing things. Success is a measurable metric of our achievement.

But successes can also bind us.

Success in one area breeds more success in the same area, which can draw us down one path, excluding others. And even if we go down another path for other success, the second success can mislead us: in one circumstance, we close a million dollar deal; in the other, the cheese I made is edible. On the surface, one is wildly great and other is okay (or at least edible).

But what if the million dollar deal locks you into something that 10 years from now you'll hate? And what if the lopsided cheese you made today, if followed, could lead to a career in gourmet cheeses?

Success is not - and cannot be - the only indicator about what the purpose and direction of our life should be. Without intending to, it can in the end blind us to other options and possibilities and directions about where our true successes might be found.

Quality and Lures

I understand now the lure of producing things other than for yourself, the drive of making a little more money.

It starts innocently enough: you start making something for yourself, and you find you're successful at it. The next thing you know, you are starting to make it (or other things just like it) for others.

Life is good. Money is rolling in, things are growing, life is splendid.

But then something happens. A problem emerges. If something is done, it will interrupt the cash flow, be embarrassing. The pressure - if not from you, then from those around you - is to figure out a way to justify things. After all, it's not a serious problem, or it doesn't rise to the level of a real problem, or it you can find ways to verify the problem doesn't impact anything. And besides, the people you're making it for will never really know.

Before you are aware, you've gone farther down this road than you intended. Another problem comes up, and then another. Always though the pressure is to make things work, to figure out a way around or through. After all, it will create issues for income.

To some extent one could say (with some justification) that this mentality is just another fallout of the industrial age. In the pre-industrial age one often made things for one's friends and neighbors, and if the product wasn't good, they'd surely be around to tell you about it. But now there are multiple layers between manufacturer and the customer. Any issues will more than likely never be brought to light -and if they do, your customers do they same to you (undoubtedly), so it's really just status quo.

But in an age that argues for quality, that has individuals and societies that are organized around quality, that suffers from a lack of quality, isn't it a bit remarkable that we are now attempting to enforce something that used to be internalized but is now imposed from outside?

Not everyone is a victim of this, of course: there are corporations that practice high quality and individuals that don't practice it at all.

But the lure of money is a powerful one, whether imposed on ourselves or from individuals outside of us. It is often left to us to navigate the rapids with what we have, hoping against hope that the river will slow down and we can get ourselves to the shore.

Thugs

I hate thugs.

I struggled through this concept yesterday, as I sat in a meeting where the self-appointed guardians of projects started pushing their own opinions and time lines down the throats of others - not for any reason or law, but simply because they believe that it should be so.

As I sat there afterwards, stewing in my resentment and anger, I realized: I hate thugs.

We typically think of thugs as low brow, heavy-handed types with no necks who use force to get what they want or enforce their own wills. But this is something we tend to associate with "undesirable elements" rather than with our own lives. This is a mistake, one that allows such people to get away with their will.

Growing up, I was the victim of thuggery twice: both times, as I recall, in fourth or fifth grade. In one instance it was a group of kids in my neighborhood; in another, it was at school. What I remember from both (other than the discovery that I could not defend myself) is the feeling of powerlessness I had in the situation, even more than fear. I was not the biggest child growing up, nor was I the most athletic, so my choices were turn and flee (or in my case, fling your skateboard, turn and flee) or get rolled (as in picked up and planted into the raised bed of dirt). In both cases, it took an authority figure to deal with the situation.

Looking back in retrospect, I wonder if this was the best thing. While it resolved the problem, what it did is instill in me a belief that I was powerless in such situations and could do nothing myself; I needed someone else to rescue me. I'm not one for fighting per se, but I wonder if defending myself would have taught a different lesson.

Because that lesson, once learned, is hard to escape from.

The reality is that such thugs dwell in all aspects of our lives. They may not use their fists and superior weight, but they do use their power, their intellect, their words and even (still) their physical presence to enforce their wills. And they are no longer simply bigger than we are: they come in all shapes and sizes, using all sorts of intimidation to enforce the dictates of their own wills.

What it leaves us with is a sense of powerlessness, a sense that I can't change anything, that I must accept the dictates of the thug because they will overwhelm me - maybe not physically anymore, but intellectually and spiritually. We become victims of our own fears, driven to hide in the recesses of our terror of being made to feel powerless again, hoping that some other authority will come and rescue us from the thug. We become dependent on others for the defense of ourselves and the initiation of our lives.

How do you fight a thug?

By standing up to them.

It's the only way. The second reality of thugs is they are often so used to getting their way, that they don't always know what to do when someone pushes back (an interesting sideshow, if you ever observe one, is to see a thug getting pressured by a more powerful thug). They often stop and give you the look as if they are in shock that anyone would counteract their decreed will. They sputter. They get red. They get embarrassed. They may lash out at others. They are not used to having their wills confounded.

Don't know how to stand up to them? Know their means of attack. Physical thugs, of course, are simply a matter of learning to defend ourselves. Other thugs are no different. Their methods of attack are standard and can be learned. Do they quote Scripture? Learn more. Do they quote regulations? Learn them better. Do they quote ideologies? Learn the ideologies, and learn the counterarguments.

Is it hard? Sure - who has time to read the Code of Federal Regulations or review Plato's theory of government in their busy lives. But the reality is this: there is something on the other side of our fear of thugs, something that if that fear is removed will be released. I suspect it's different for individuals, and I cannot even fully tell you myself what is on the other side of my own fear. But I can sense it there, needing only to have fear moved aside to be released.

It occurs to me that the day we stand up to the thug is our life we will find that we have far more power than we thought. And if we do it often enough, we will find we are capable of far more than we ever envisioned.

Let that day be today - and every day - in our lives.

Gray

What happens when the visions and dreams we hold get subsumed under an avalanche of reality?

There comes a time - seemingly often in my own life - where all that I wanted to do or intended to do or dreamed of doing gets crushed in the onslaught of the real world. I try and hold on pieces of it, or convince myself that it is only periodic and there a better time coming. But what happens when those, too, get blown away?

I bring to mind those books I have read where individuals pushed through to their dreams through a haze of disappointments and discouragements. I look at them, and then I look at myself, and I wonder "What if"?

But then I am brought down to earth by the life that I actually have, the responsibilities to which I am bound and the commitments which I have made. Suddenly achieving one's dreams seems far away when that achievement is won at any price.

The reality - although I hate to admit it - is that I am not a free agent in my own existence. I cannot do anything that I want to at any time. Instead, what I do is a careful balance of negotiation among the competing interests and responsibilities and individuals in my life.

Sound less motivational, doesn't it? Not "I am the Master of My Fate, I am the Captain of my Soul" but "I am the Negotiator of the Possible, I am the Keeper of Responsibilities". Hardly the thing to sell as a self-motivational title.

Which is back to the crux of my problem. How, in the midst of things as they are, do I find the spark to keep on having something to work towards? How do I find the motivation to believe that something I actually want is possible, rather than accept the seeming fact that all that is possible is responsibilities and commitments?

How do I not lose what is left of my inner core in the reality of a life which seemingly consists only of "musts" and "have-to's"?

Rush

Must run off early,

No time for a blog. I know:

Let's write a haiku!

Reservoirs of Strength

"A thing is going to happen that has not happened since the Elder Days: The Ents are going to wake up, and find that they are strong." - Gandalf the White, The Two Towers

How do we tap our reservoirs of secret strength?

We all have secret strength, those places in our soul that rise to the challenge of our lives. Too often they are buried under layers of everyday living, squelched like a spring under a mound of rock and soil. But, like any spring, it only takes clearing away the debris above it to have the water flow out.

But how do we do it? It's easy to conceptually discuss dirt and water (even kids get that), but how do we discuss it in terms of our lives, where the task of every day overrun even our best attempts to change the smallest thing in our lives?

I've three suggestions:

1) Believe - Without believing that we can - even if we don't know how - we will never make the attempt to try.

2) Commit - We need to commit - fully - to whatever it is we are trying to do. If running, I need to make the commitment that I will run on my days, regardless of how I feel. If writing, I need to make the commitment to write the 1700 words a day.

3) Push - Too often I find that I cannot because I will not. Unless I push myself to the edge of what I think I can do, I don't find out that there is more beyond that. I often think the edge is a cliff, when what really seems to be is a step up or down into a whole new plain.

Without believing, I will never commit - because I cannot commit to a vague idea or something I really don't think I can do. Without committing, I will never have the drive to push myself. And if I don't push myself, I'll never find out what I can really do.

Be an Ent. Wake up, and find that you are strong.

Practicing Prayer Cuts

I am not the best person at prayer.

I don't suppose I've ever really been that good at it - regular, I suppose, but never good. I don't know - I'm just never one of those people for who prayer seems to flow, or whom seems to be able to hold conversations with God. If it's not written down, I forget it; if I don't have a model, I seem to drift into the same five or ten items ever time.

But this morning, in the midst of my Iaido, I had an epiphany.

I was practicing chudon waza from seiza. Kneeling, one faces forward (mae), right (migi), left (hidari) and rearwards (ushiro), and either step out or turns and step as you draw into a suhei giri (straight cut; kneeling puts the cut at kubi (neck). I was practicing downstairs, so I was not able to rise for the rest of the kata lest I take out the glass lamp bulb in the fan. Instead, I practiced rising to my knees, turning and drawing (nukitsuke), then sheathing (noto) and doing it again.

As I continued to repeat the pattern - rise, turn, draw, sheathe - I realized that I was really practicing something no different than how I should practice prayer.

The great secret of Iaido - or of any martial art, I suppose - is not that there are always secret techniques (there's always more that you can learn) but the fact that any person can master them, if only they will practice. That's the secret: repetition. The difference between the master and the student is thousands of hours of practicing the techniques over and over (Malcolm Gladwell in his fabulous book Outliers: The Story of Success puts a number on it: 10,000) , slowly become better, making what must often seem like minuscule adjustments, until at last the techniques become as natural as breathing, the weapon an extension of one's body.

Prayer is no different than this. We think prayer is some great thing that we must instantly become great at to be effective. In fact, prayer is just the same: something the Christian is to practice over and over daily. We may perceive the improvement in our prayers, but one day we will find that praying has become as natural as any other conversation we have.

We are at a disadvantage: we read the great prayers of Moses or David or Nehemiah or Daniel and rate ourselves against them. What we do not realize is that these were not prayers pulled out of nowhere; these were the prayers of men who had spent a great deal of time praying, who had practiced prayer until they could pray with great effectiveness and power.

So when I pray today or tonight or tomorrow I have a new perspective: it's not just that I'm praying and talking to God (which is, of course, of supreme importance), it's that I'm training myself in prayer the way a warrior trains in Iaido: regularly, patiently, incrementally.

Early Autumn Moon

The bright Autumn moon:

does it's light make morning cold

or is it the wind?

Running In Grooves

I pushed myself this morning.

I'm trying to alternate my exercise program between aerobic (running) and weight lifting. Running is always something of a challenge for me - not to do it so much as to get myself to do it. Truth is, I'm lazy and would often rather spend my time thinking about running than actually doing the running.

But out the door I got this morning and headed down the road.

At about the half mile point, the thought floated into my head "We should do three miles today". I was feeling good. My legs didn't hurt and I wasn't too overly warm. Besides, that would be a 5k and that's what I was really working towards.

So off I continued to run. At about the 1.5 mile point, the thought comes back. And immediately gets shot down by the right side of my brain.

"Oh dear Lord, are you serious? Really? We're going to have run two miles anyway. I'm tired. It's probably later than you think, and you still have lots of things to do this morning. Let's just head back - yummy coffee is waiting." Back and forth the conversation went as I rounded the last curve and started up the hill towards the house.

And passed the turnoff by as I went on.

This probably sounds much more dramatic than it actually is. The point - at least the point to myself - is that I pushed myself beyond what I thought I was capable of.

More often than not, I'm less than energetic (that's a pretty way to say lazy). I do the minimum. I'd like to say there are reasons - like lack of acknowledgement, lack of reward - but in point of fact, I just don't like to make myself uncomfortable. I find that groove in my life and want to stick there.

But life is not found in the grooves. Grooves become ruts, muddy trails that stick us in the mire. It's only on the solid ground, the ground between the grooves, that we can make real progress.

However, in order to get out of the groove, it's necessary that we put in some effort, to push ourselves out of the groove. In the end, no one - friends, spouse, parents, children, even coffee (which otherwise can do so much) - can pull us out. We have to do it ourselves.

I made 3.25 miles this morning, beyond a 5K. I felt good when I ended - not great, but certainly better than I expected. Everything - including this post - got done this morning in the allotted time. The coffee was still hot. Life is good - because I pushed myself out of the groove.

And then, the Left Brain muttered, if we could only do 5 miles...

Task List

I have had a total of 1680 tasks to do at work since 25 April 2011.

Originally the Task List started out as an exercise in self preservation for all of us, a tool to demonstrate what we were actually doing and the work load we bore. As things came up, the intent was to grade them as to priority and type, then add them to the list. The hope, as I recall, was to give a tool to others to explain precisely what it was we did and how understaffed we were.

The original purpose of the tool has been cast aside (we got too busy) but I have patiently continued to maintain my own list as a testament to what I am doing and (hopefully) use it to justify my existence at the end of the year.

As I go through the list, what I find is that so many of the tasks on it were listed as "critical" or "Hot-Hot-Hot!" at the time they were initiated. Timelines which were critically dependent on one thing; turnaround times that "made the difference" to the client; things which simply "must be done": all now are little "complete" line items on the list.

The reality? Most of these made little or no difference, and the effort and time put in were swiftly forgotten once the task was completed. People "move on" with staggering rapidity, leaving efforts and time cast aside. In the end, we are as often judged by what people remember about us as much as it is what we have done for them.

Part of my heart cries out as I review the list every week that this is a sad commentary on my life: tasks marked "complete" on a list that, in five years, will probably not matter.

That old disconnect again: the reality of life versus the need to make an impact and difference through my work. How do I reconcile these?

End of the Week

Fighting the end of the week petering out again.

I seem to get here more often than not: that sense of Friday not as "It's the weekend", but a sense of staggering to the finish line once again. There's not sense of victory involved, only a sense of "it's done".

It is times like this that make me feel the burden of am I really moving forward in my life? Day feels like yesterday, month like last month. Things this year do not appear to be much different or changed or improved from things last year, and the future seemingly holds no different options.

I wonder if part of this is simply the reality of life. Before I had the ability to move around in careers more frequently, or even change them more than once; now, the focus of my career is not so much the ability to meet my own perceived needs as much as it is to have stability for those who depend on me.

Stability is good, but it brings with it its own set of issues: a sense of being trapped for one, a sense of becoming more dependent on circumstances beyond one's control, a sense of being locked in place.

This time of year is my usual "I need to get an education in something else" consideration period, that time of year just before annual reviews (and hopefully raises) that I become despondent about my ability to progress in my current career or start something different and think "If only I had a degree in X, I would be more marketable". Maybe - ask all the people with huge student loans and careers that pay less than mine. Maybe it's just catering to the fact that I really like to learn and am good at school. Maybe it's a recognition that the higher up you move, the more rarefied the atmosphere, and in my current choice I will always have a couple of marks against me from the start.

But all of this blends into a harmonious whole, a sort of low grade fever of despondency, which in turn tinges even the best news - a weekend - with a sense of "Yay?".

Accomplishment

There's a new storm in the ocean of my employ: Medb of Connacht.

She is fascinating to me. She has the sort of management style that one would wish ( I think, anyway) from one's own boss: forward, honest, open. She takes action as well, instead of merely talking about things or taking the input of others and then doing nothing.

I think the thing that is most interesting to me is the difference in management styles: simply put, how does one end up with one's style?

I am not by nature a driven man. In some cases this works well - for example, the ability to determine what is critical and what is not, and to have perspective on the daily "rushes" that one often faces - but in other ways it does not. The chief example I can think of for this is the sense of not really accomplishing anything or having the inability to follow something through to the end.

Why is this? Why do I have this sense that I have difficulty in completing anything? Two reasons occur to me: one is that I seldom have a clear vision of what it is I want to accomplish; the second is that I little sense of what I will achieve when I accomplish it.

Clear vision? I often suffer for it. I have many good initial ideas, but seeing them in their final form is often fuzzy for me. I want to write: do I have a vision of what that book should look like, or how I will get there? Too often I do not.

The second issue - more damning, I think - is that I seldom have a sense of what the accomplishment will bring. I'd like to blame it on a long career in which much has been demanded and little reward returned, but that is not strictly fair. It's probably as often that I am not clear on what the reward really is. For some things - like Highland Games, for example - merely participating and not being sore at the end is the reward. For others - and let's be frank here - the financial reward is either not clear or not forthcoming at all, which tends to dampen enthusiasm; after all, how many "emergencies" can you deal and succeed at and still get virtually nothing?

I'd not trade my own style - it's me, and has served me well in many aspects, but accomplishment has not always been one of them. Perhaps it's time to learn a bit from a polar opposite.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow is something that is expected by almost everyone.

We believe in tomorrow as we believe in today,

thinking that as today went perfectly well or even ordinarily,

tomorrow will be the same.

Tomorrow, predictably, will come as today did:

slowly, gently, regularly.

But tomorrow is not predictable; tomorrow is wild and fickle,

because we do not know tomorrow.

Tomorrow may or may not come, and we will never know that

until we reach the edge of today:

for some, the tomorrow will roll in as the tide,

for others, today is the last tomorrow they will ever spend.

So how do we invest today:

preparing to live by the inertia of tomorrow,

or living now as if tomorrow was not a given thing?

The Fellowship of the Ring

To celebrate Nanowrimo (because, of course, you're supposed to read a lot of books to help you write) I'm re-reading The Fellowship of the Ring.

I'm one of that approximately 25 year generation that did not have the visualization of Tolkien's world through Rankin-Bass' The Hobbit and Return of the King or Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings or Peter Jackson's mighty trilogy in the first decade of 2000. All of Tolkien's world lived in my head, so I got to come to the whole thing fresh.

In re-reading the book, what I'm captivated by is how good of a writer Tolkien really is. Even with the fine adaptation of Jackson's (which generally held the closest to the book), Tolkien's vision as expressed through his writing far excels anything that the movie visually shows.

But the strength of Tolkien's writing, as I journey with him again, is how much of his writing is dialogue, the interaction between characters, or the descriptive quality of the Fellowship's travel across Middle Earth. Tolkien paints what he knows, especially in the Shire: much like C.S. Lewis, his descriptions recall an English countryside which even in his time was rapidly disappearing. You can see the woods and hear the streams as you read along with them. Watching Frodo develop from a Shire-bound hobbit to one who will self sacrifice, or the growth of the courage of Sam and Pippin- these are things which are not overt, but subtly happen over the course of the book - the hallmark of a master writer.

In reading again, I feel sorrow - sorrow for those who thing The Lord of The Rings is only a movie series, or even an online game. In thinking that this is all there is - battles, Orcs, magic, with some travel thrown in - they miss the greater whole, a work by a man who studied the English language all his life and uses it masterfully.